Decrypto

Today's review is of the 2018 release, Decrypto. For 3-8 players, it takes 15-45 minutes.

Overview

In Decrypto, you and your teammates are codebreakers, trying to break your own teammates' cryptic words and intercept (correctly guess) your opponents'. If you get yours wrong twice, you lose, but if you intercept theirs twice, you win!

back of box, showing components; image from here

The concept is straightforward enough: your team can see four randomly-chosen words in slots 1-4 (see back of box illustration above). On a turn, one teammate draws a 'disk' card with some permutation of three numbers (3.4.2, 1.3.4, etc.). That teammate looks at the words correponding to the numbers drawn and chooses one word to describe each, presenting them in that order to their team, who then guess the associated numbers. Using the back of the box as an example, "3.4.2" corresponds to cocktail, sombrero, and dragonfly. So the teammate might say "drink, hat, bug," and his team will (hopefully) guess 3.4.2. If they guess something different, your team gets one wrong, and if that happens twice, you lose. But the other team also gets a guess (without seeing/knowing the words in the slots)- and if they guess 3.4.2, they get 'intercept' the message, and if that happens twice, they win. So the challenge here is to pick words that will enable your team to guess correctly without being too obvious and tipping the other team off to the real words. If the game has not yet ended, the next turn starts, with the next teammate (in clockwise order if you wish) drawing a disk card and having to provide cryptic yet descriptive words. 

Review

Very nice game. This one really makes you think. It is especially difficult if you get two words that have some similarity (like "boat" and "water"). And both sides are writing down which words correspond to which numbers, so as the game progresses, you have to be increasingly careful not to tip off the other team- being cryptic is key, but not so cryptic that your own team is thrown off. Similar in spirit/concept to Codenames, I can't decide which one I like better . . . but I'm leaning towards this one.

Rating: A