Sync: A Word-Guessing Party Game Where Every Clue Counts

Do you have a single word to clue your teammate to guess ‘photograph’? Be careful not to waste any clues, because in this game they’re limited…

Published by Rabble, Sync is a party game designed for 2-8 players and with a 20-minute play time.

Gameplay

Players split into two teams. Each team takes four ‘2’ tokens and six ‘1’ tokens. Additionally, each player takes a Sync token. If there are not the same number of players on the two teams, someone on the smaller team will take an extra Sync token.

When it is a team’s turn, they choose one player to be the guesser. He chooses a number between one and five. The other players draw a card and look at the word corresponding to the number he chose — this will be the word he has to guess.

Anyone on the team may spend tokens to give a clue to the guesser. It must be either one or a two-word clue, depending on which token is spent. The team may give as many clues as they have tokens, but they will not be getting more tokens during the game, so they must spend them wisely. The guesser may guess the word at any time.

A player may spend his Sync token to give a one-word clue, or at the start, before any other clues have been given, he may use it to super sync. When super syncing, the player gives a one-word clue, and no other clues may be given for the word. If the guesser is able to successfully guess the word from a super sync clue, it is worth two points.

When a super sync is not used, if the word is guessed correctly, it is worth one point. If the guesser gives an incorrect guess, the other team has one chance to guess the word and steal the point.

Teams continue taking turns until one team runs out of tokens, then the other team takes back-to-back turns until it also runs out of tokens, and then the game ends. The team with the most points wins.

Review

As a team-based word guessing game, Sync treads some very familiar territory. However, turning the number of clues available to a team into a finite resource that has to be spread out over multiple rounds forces players to choose carefully how to spend their clues and when.

The ability to super sync is also a fun push-your-luck mechanic. Do you think you have a great clue? Do you think you know exactly what single word will get a player to the right guess? Is it worth the risk?

Because there’s not really turns for clue giving, it is possible for a more shy or quiet player to feel left out of gameplay. Players obviously can’t discuss which clue to give, either, so it’s potentially easy for a player on a team to take a bit too much control.

The game looks quite elegant, with attractive cards and colors used. It doesn’t have much effect on the gameplay, but it’s still nice to have such a pretty game on the table.

Sync isn’t perfect and treads some pretty familiar ground, but we actually did find the limited clues to have a real effect on the way the game flowed. There’s also a cooperative variant which we enjoyed, and in general we found this a fun take on this genre of game.

Pros: Beautiful components, limited number of clues as a resource is an interesting mechanic

Cons: Easy for a quieter player to feel left out, there are a lot of similar games out there

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.