If you've ever played Codenames (CGE) or any of the numerous iterations of Similo (Horrible Guild), you won't find it Hard to Get how to play this game from Mads Emil Christensen and Gameplay Publishing. It's a party game with mechanics that borrow from both games.
Hard to Get comprises two large sets of cards. There are 112 double-sided word cards, each of which show a word (mostly concrete nouns) or the name of a well-known person. They are printed so that the word on each card can be easily read from both ends of a table. The cards are similar in design and size to those used in Codenames, and if you have Codenames, it's a big plus that you could incorporate Hard to Get cards to extend the vocabulary available in Codenames and, vice versa, you could use Codenames cards with Hard to Get. You take a random selection of 16 of these cards and lay them out in a 4 x 4 grid. The other deck of (140) cards is designated as a 'Dilemma' deck, where each card shows a pair of words; some opposites (eg: solution/problem) but others just offering alternatives (eg: pasta/rice).
One player takes on the role of 'Witness' and the other players are working together cooperatively as the 'Detectives'. The Witness takes a key card - again, much like the key cards used by the spymasters in Codenames. In this case tho' the key card shows the position of just one card in the 4 x 4 grid. That's the card the Witness is trying to get the Detectives to find.
The Witness draws a Dilemma card and indicates which of the two words on that card has the better connection to the target word. The Detectives then decide among themselves which words they should eliminate. They must choose at least one word but they can remove more than one; and they'll need to do that on some turns because, to win, the players need to have just one word left at the end of no more than five rounds. Here then the elimination process is reminiscent of that used in Similo and in its predecessor game Hall of Fame (CosplaYou).
We've always enjoyed Codenames but we've never really considered it a party game: it's too cerebral and there's too much downtime while the spymasters agonise over their clues. It's also very challenging for those acting as spymasters because they have to take account not just of their own words but also of all those relating to the other team. Hard to Get offers a comparable challenge - with the Witness needing to be on the same wavelength as the Detectives - but in a simpler and faster process. That means it really does work as a party game. However, that doesn't mean it's easy: you may be lucky and draw Dilemma cards that very obviously point to words in the grid but often neither of the Dilemma words will offer a direct connection with any of the words, so both Witness and Detectives will need to fall back on some lateral thinking. And tho' the various Similo games are much more visually appealing, each set has its own theme and so won't necessarily be as immediately playable by anyone and everyone as this game, which is dependant only on players' everyday vocabulary.
Hard to Get suggests on the box that it caters for 2-12 players. It's playable with two but much of the fun of the game comes in players' shared reasoning in their response to the Witness' clues, so we much prefer it with at least three or four Detectives to argue over the clues. We'd also consider playing Hard to Get at even larger player counts than the suggested maximum of 12. Provided everyone can see the word grid and the Dilemma cards, there really is no upper limit.
(Review by Selwyn Ward)