Ready for a new year of new (and old favorite) board games? Here’s my game of the week for the first week of the New Year 2022: Concept.

A simple name for a simple game!

If you like charades and mental processing of words and images, you are going to love this game! It’s basically picture charades. I played it at a game night with some adult friends and loved it so much I came home and ordered it from amazon. We then played it a few times for gameschooling and then again over the holidays when my older son was home. The goal is win points by guessing words or phrases that the another player gives visual clues for. So it’s like Pictionary, but instead of drawing the clues, you use the icon squares on the board.

These visual clues, all laid out on the board, range from concrete things like colors, sizes, and shapes, to abstract things like emotions, titles, occupations, countries, historic events, and more. For example, look at the image below. What pictures would you choose to tell your opponents to guess “Sherlock Holmes”? The green question mark placed by the blue man indicates “male.” Then the green cubes by the next three clues to the right indicate things that describe that topic of man: “character,” “movie, and “title of book.” The next two rows, with yellow and then blue indicators by them, indicate subtopics.

It might take you a few rounds to get the hang of it, but then after that, like I say, if you love charades and processing of pictures and words, you will love it. I love it because everyone can play at once, either as a clue giver or a guesser, and it gives your brain a workout. Each card of suggested words and phrases has three levels of difficulty. I give it 5 out of 5 stars!

It’s definitely a keeper for your library of games. It even comes in a jr. edition, solely focused on animals!
The regular game above is for ages 10 and up, the jr. game below is targeted for under 10, especially for kids who can’t read yet, but the whole family can play it together.