Designed by Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance
For 3 – 8 players
15 – 45 mins playing time
Ages 12+

Review by Ben Ruegg

Decrypto is a new party game that sets two teams up against each other trying to not only decipher their own codes, but more importantly, intercept and crack the codes of the other team.

Upon hearing about Decrypto and reading the description, it was easy for me and my group of friends to assume we were about to play a different version of the already popular game ‘Codenames’. For this review, I invited my friends, who we have played Codenames with a lot, to experience Decrypto with my wife and I so that we could discuss the similarities and differences.

In Decrypto you have 2 teams of between 2 and 4 players facing off against each other trying to crack the other teams codes. You must also continue to be able to decrypt your own teams code at the same time. The first team to successfully intercept the other teams code twice will win the game. If one team fails to decrypt their own codes twice, they will lose.

At the beginning of a round, your team decides who will be the first encryptor. This changes each round so everyone will get a chance at encrypting. This player then takes 4 random key cards and slides them into a very eye catching decryption machine. This allows your entire team to see the words on the red screens. These words will stay the same for the entire game.

Below each of the words is a number and your team needs to work out a number combination that only the encryptor sees on a special floppy disc card. The way this happens is that your encryptor will draw a random code card and needs to think of words, sounds or dances that relate to the words on the screen. For example, if the White Teams words were Apple, Guitar, Suit and Phone in that order of 1 2 3 4 and the encryptor gave them 3 clues in order of ‘strings’, ‘tie’, and ‘tree’, would you be able to guess what number the encryptor was trying to get them to decode?

If you guessed the number was 231, you were right! If the White Team got this right (obviously the encryptor stays out of their own teams discussion) they would then pass play over to the Black Team. But, if they got it wrong, they take one of the ‘Miscommunication’ tokens.

Now here is the thing we all love about this game; the idea is to actually intercept the other teams code!

When each team gets their encryptor to read out their clues, like when the White Team would have done just before, the other team will write them down and from round 2 onwards, the opposing teams will get a chance to intercept the other teams code as well. If they are successful, they get an ‘Interception’ token. How this works is that the opposing team will read out their code first followed by the team whose turn it is. Once both have read their codes out, the encryptor reveals the actual code of the floppy disc card and you check if the current team got it right (they get nothing if they were right or a ‘Miscommunication’ token if wrong) and the opposing team will get an ‘Interception’ token if they were able to crack the code or nothing if they did not. The game continues on with each team taking a turn of trying to decrypt their codes before moving onto the next round. In our game, we played about 6 rounds before the game was over. It was absolutely thrilling and nail biting at times hoping that our team understood our clues without potentially allowing the other team to start to piece together what our words were in our decryption machine.

Because the words used in each game do not change every round, each team must make sure that the clues are not too similar to previous clues because while the opposing team cannot see your keywords, they may start to make connections between the words previously used and the new clues they just heard. By writing down what clues had been used before, you may start to see connections between clues and therefore intercept the other teams code.

For the record, our group loves this game. We actually rate it higher than our previous word association game, ‘Codenames’. We of course love both but Decrypto is much more fun for everyone involved. Decrypto gets you thinking outside the box a lot more. You don’t want to be too obvious because the other team will eventually figure out your codes. Instead of just trying to get your team to guess your own codes (which gets you nothing if you get it right), Decrypto is more about intercepting the other teams codes and that is where this game shines. Decrypto should be part of your board game collection. I even took it to my work to show my students the game and they also agreed that this is something they would love to play again with friends. Grab your copy today.

Pros

• Excellent game that encourages teamwork and deep thinking
• So much fun working out what the other teams code is
• Suspense filles games when you hope your team understands your clues to get your code

Cons

• First time play can be a bit confusing but everyone worked it out by round 2 or 3