USAopoly | Hues and Cues | Guessing Board Game | Ages 8+ | 3-10 Players | 30 Minutes Playing Time

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I consider Hues and Cues a party-style game since it accommodates up to ten players out of the box. Players give one-and-two-word clues to try to get the other players to guess which colour they’re describing. The twist is they can’t use colour clues like “blue” or “green” for example. They also can’t refer to anything in the room. Hues and Cues is not colorblind friendly, so depending on degree of colorblindness, these folks may sadly be left out. If you know of a work-around, please leave it in the comments below! They started placing their first cones and the questions immediately arose — the green of an avocado on the outside or on the inside once you cut it open?

Because then I had a chance to give another cue — up to two words to help zero them in on the right space. It could be as simple as saying “cut open”, “pre-cut”, “guacamole”, or changing it up and going a different route like “Douglas fir”. Oh, so close! In Hues and Cues, players are trying to guess a specific colour from a grid of 480 different colours based on one word and then two word clues. Once everyone has made their guess they get points for how close their guesses are to the target colour. Dead simple. Once the cue is given, players take turns to guess the correct hues with their markers. Once all players have a guessed, another two-word hint is given and players get another opportunity to pinpoint the specific shade. For this second clue, we banned the use of words like light, dark and pale after someone followed the clue ‘poo’ with ‘darker poo’.

On the card there will be four different colors and coordinates. The coordinates help you find the color on the gameboard. The cue giver will choose one of the four colors that they will use for the round.

In a round of Hues and Cues, the clue-giver will draw a card—giving them a color that they want to try to get everyone else at the table to guess. You’ll start by giving a one-word clue. Then everyone will place their pawns on the color they think represents the word you said.Hues and Cues exists firmly in the same world as a game like Dixit. It’s easy to jump in and play. It’s also easy to learn and accommodates a huge number of players. But for me, Dixit requires more of a storytelling brain. You have to interpret a picture and you can choose to give a short clue but you can open it up to a whole paragraph if you want. There are lots of different shades of all varieties to try to differentiate between. Yes, that worked for me. My ideas for the game came to me at the oddest times. In the shower or during twilight sleep while trying to wake up in the morning. For every hour I spent actively working on the game itself, I easily had it in my head four times as much just thinking through different aspects and possibilities. Hues and Cues is the type of party game that we play more like an activity than a game. For us, the points don’t really matter, we’ll play it until we’re board Of course, I will also note that players with color-blindness will find this game relatively inaccessible. The subtle difference between colors is the core of the gameplay, so having any sort of color blindness will make the game very difficult. INTEREST In fact, when playing with that group we don’t stop with just being the cue-giver twice. We just keep going until our lunch break is over.

So if I select the color K14, I might say “beach” because the color reminds me of a beachy blue. The players guessing will then take one of their pawns and place it on top of a color on the board they think best represents “Beach.”I consulted with a board-certified ophthalmologist during the design process. On top of that, I – and multiple publishers – tested the game with different players of all types of deficiencies. Because Hues and Cues isn’t about “what colour is an apple”… It’s about how one recalls or sees an apple, and how well it matches the other players’ perceptions of an apple, say. So players who see the colour spectrum differently will still see the hue in the same area of the board as you and I do. After this second pass, the cue-giver places the scoring frame on the board so that the target color is in the center of the scoring frame and players score points. An exact guess is 3 points! After everyone has guessed, you can give an additional clue. This one up to two words, to allow people to refine their guesses. You’ll then place the included box on the board so that your target color is in the center. Everyone who is in, or near, the box will score points. The clue giver scores points based on the number of people who were in the scoring box as well. Players will get to make two guesses on what you are hinting at. Game Experience: Yes. Because of my experience with colour theory, I knew everyone could describe colours using their own recollections – whether it’s comparing it to food items, their first car or their favourite Pokemon. That became the starting point.

Sometimes a game comes along and you look at it and think: “How did someone not come up with this sooner?” Hues and Cues is one of those games. The cards have that same glossy finish, making them top-notch as well. Honestly you’d rarely have to shuffle the cards because there are four colors on each, and there are so many of them that you’d never be able to tell if you actually had a duplicate. I also appreciate the savvy design choice to give coordinates to each color and notate those on the cards. It makes finding the colors a breeze. When we first opened the game, read the rules, and sat down to play, we thought it sounded super simple. If you guess the exact same space as the color for the round, you receive three points for that piece. Most of our game plays have been with 4 or 5 players. But the game has enough color cones for 10 players to join in. And once we get past this COVID era, we’ll give it a shot with 10. Plenty of color cards.Great stuff. We need to wrap this up now, Scott… Like the rest of the year, the time’s flown by! Just two more thoughts: first, if I wanted to get an interesting answer from you – one nobody else is likely to get – what question would I have to ask? Of course, you can’t just say “green.” First off… that is a terrible clue. There are like 20 different shades of green on the board. Also, the rules specifically disallow color words. You also can’t describe something in the room that people can see. It’s got to be more like a feeling. “Herbaceous,” maybe. Or “dusty.” This is because the Cue-giver gets a point for every marker within the interior boundaries of the scoring rig. This is a maximum of nine points. If the maximum number of points a guesser can get is 3 points with a single marker, initiating the scoring after a single cue can limit the points gained by the other players. The clue you give cannot be a primary or ordinary colour word (yellow, blue, red, orange), but it can be a shade (violet, fuchsia, magnolia). It also cannot be an object present in the room you are playing. A rule of thumb is to think it needs to be something that can be misinterpreted or, at least interpreted, differently by the group.