Sometimes you come across a game where gameplay is quite simple but you'd never know it from the rules. Enrico Gandolfo's Mission Complete is a case in point. It's a small box cooperative card game from Brain Games, a company that, in the main, publishes easy-to-play games for families and children. The rules tho' for Mission Complete make it a step up in complexity - to learn, if not to play...
The premise of the game is that the 2-5 players are robots completing missions. Players each choose a starting card (robot) that sets that player's colour. A deck is created using the 20 number cards for each player's colour. These number cards show 1, 2 or 3, and there's text on the cards that show missions. Players have a hand of three or four cards (depending on player count). One player will draw a card for its mission text and the colour of the card will indicate which player needs to satisfy the mission condition. The conceit of the game tho' is that players can only communicate with each other when and how permitted by the top card on their pile. The number 3 cards (of which there are three of each colour) allow the player free rein; number 2 cards (nine of each colour) allow gesticulation but the player cannot speak; number 1 cards (eight of each colour) prohibit both speech and gesticulation. You need to complete three missions between you in order to secure a collective win.
Tho' the rules (those in English at least) seem clunky and may put off some players, Mission Complete is easy enough to play once you get going. It then becomes a rather interesting exercise in communication, with players sometimes playing cards that are otherwise unhelpful to the actual mission objective just so that they can pass key information on to others.
Mission Complete is certainly different from most other titles in the Brain Games range but it plays quickly (20-30 minutes) and makes for an entertaining filler: ideal for friends and family who are quite literally not speaking to one another :-)