Published by Magic Bean Games, Sixteen is an easy-to-play UNO-style game where players are playing their pleasingly chunky coloured number tiles with the aim of being the first to get rid of all their tiles or, if no-one goes out, having the lowest total score value of tiles in hand when everyone has passed because they have no legal placements.
The game is played using sets of tiles 1-16 in five different colours. In addition there are some tiles with special effects. After shuffling all the tiles in a bag they are divvied up among the 2–4 players, who hide their tiles behind their individual screens. All the value 1 tiles are placed out and players take turns playing a tile or run of tiles to follow the 1. Tiles placed must ordinarily always be higher than the previous tile, but you can jump numbers - so you can play a red 10 after the red 1 and so exclude the red 2-9 tiles. A '16 restart' tile lets you reset a row, however, and you can also use a scissors or trashcan tile to remove tiles that have previously been placed.
The rules for Sixteen are intuitively easy to grasp but the game can be a tactical tussle as players optimise their tile placements as they deduce the tiles that they believe their opponents have behind their screens. From our plays at Board's Eye View, the trashcan tiles have proved to be especially valuable in reopening placement opportunities that have previously been closed off but the trick in Sixteen is to time your use of the special tiles for best effect.
Winning at Sixteen will almost certainly involve some 'take that' placements to deny opponents the opportunity to put down tiles but the game works well nonetheless as a family game that children can play pretty much as soon as they can reliably count up to 16. You can expect games to run to no more than 15-20 minutes (so roughly a very appropriate 16 minutes), so Sixteen is never going to outstay its welcome.