Designers design, developers refine, playtesters test, publishers publish, then gamers... go and get the rules wrong. Bless us. Well, in my defence, teaching Wacky Wizard's Caution Signs as an opening filler on game night just two minutes after opening the box was highly likely to lead to a mistake, even with this very simple ruleset. But, it turned out to be a good thing. Let me explain...
The elevator pitch for Caution Signs could well be 'So Clover! with drawings' - although it is competitive rather than cooperative like the superb 2021 word association game from Repos Production, the principle of rebuilding clues derived from pairs of words is very similar. Here, each player bar one - the Guesser - receives an Adjective and a Noun and has 20 seconds in which to draw that combination on a thematically shaped dry-erase board: a Drowning Pegasus, a Friendly Pig, a Confused Hairdresser, and so on.
The Guesser then has to rebuild the Adjective/Noun combinations: is that a Pig or a Pegasus (or even a Pigasus!)? That's definitely a Hairdresser, but are they Friendly or Confused? This is the meat and potatoes of the game and it works very well: the Artists fret that their combination might not be picked, the Guesser tries to get them all right, and there's nothing to be gained in anyone not doing their best.
The scoring takes a little effort to wrap your head around...
3 points for Artist, if both elements guessed correctly
2 points for Guesser, if both guessed correctly
1 point for Artist, if only one element guessed
0 points for Guesser, if one or no elements correct
0 points for Artist, if no elements correct
Play one round per player at five or more players, or two rounds if fewer; add up the scores, find your winner.
So, where did I go wrong? Well, experienced So Clover! players will probably have guessed already: I didn't add any 'red herring' words. After a couple of rounds of people getting all the words correct, we collectively thought, 'This would be much better with dummy words added to the mix': a quick check of the rulebook and there it was... add two of each. Now, the game was more challenging and way more fun.
Actually, we tried something else, too: a couple of players complained that 20 seconds was too short for their inner Da Vinci to shine through. I bumped my Ovo timer up to 30 seconds and, again, all the clues were got, rather than there being room for amused confusion. The timer was quickly reset to 20 seconds.
Caution Signs is a fun party game, especially for people who haven't had their fill of So Clover! and don't mind that their often meagre artistry skills are going to be deliberately tested. Hey, at least it's not just six seconds per drawing like Sixty Second Scribbles. Everyone who has played the game has enjoyed it, win or lose, which is an excellent sign for a party game.
I have some quibbles, though, mostly with the production: the cards are too flimsy, too awkward in shape - the constraints of matching the card shape to the dry erase board make the triangular cards difficult to shuffle and sort - and, worst of all, too few in number. A couple of games at high player counts will see you through the decks; yes, the combinations that come up will be a bit different the next time around, but way more cards would still be much better.
Words-wise, across five games, it was very, very rare that the Noun was not guessed - one player didn't know what a Pegasus was, one couldn't remember what the back end of a Seal looked like, and another confused a Pig with a Dog, that was it - which means that 99% of the game is in the Adjectives. Here, too, bad luck can scupper a Guesser: it's not hard differentiating Melting from Tiny from Fast; much harder telling apart Stylish from Fashionable from Noble... if they come up like that, it's a crapshoot. Lastly, the unintuitive scoring is easy to mess up and can lead to a lot of tallying, especially at high player counts.
So, inadvertently, we did our own developing and playtesting of Caution Signs and ended up landing pretty much where the designers Scott Brady and Danielle Reynolds intended for us to be in the first place. Reverse engineering the design process showed how right the in-game variables are for creating an engaging balance of fun, creativity and challenge. The only Caution I would have about the game is the small number of cards; other than that, all Signs point to everyone having a very good time.
(Review by David Fox)