Blink
Family Card Game
Review by Russ Lockwood
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BlinkFamily Card GameReview by Russ Lockwood |
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Blink The best card game every invented, at least to my taste, is Crazy Eights. Oh sure, you've got Poker, Solitaire, Rummy, and such but Crazy Eights has that combination of mystery, strategy, and simplicity that marks the great card games. Blink ($8.95: ISBN 0-9708554-1-9) is basically Crazy Eights, but without turns. The 56-card deck is divided in two, one card from each player is flipped up in the middle, and each player draws three cards from the deck. First player to run through his deck wins. Cards have different shapes (stars, triangles, teardrops, crescent moons, and lightning bolts) in different colors (red, green, gray, yellow, brown, and blue) with a different number of said colored shapes (one to five per card). The idea it to match shapes, colors, or numbers and empty your hand. You have a maximum of three cards in your hand at one time, and you play them as fast as possible, one at a time, and draw as fast as possible, one at a time. Games last 5 minutes or less. Better eye-hand coordination usually wins. It's the first "twitch" card game since 52 Pick Up. We played for an hour. I don't recall how many games, but 10 or so would be about right. Play value was high at the beginning, but waned as we continued. Blink is a pleasant diversion, but it didn't dethrone Crazy Eights. Out of the Box Publishing
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The trouble with getting a big hit out of the box is that you're constantly striving to surpass it. Apples to Apples was a monster hit and deservedly so. Technically, Bosworth was first, and I liked that quite a bit, so A&A did top it. We still pull A&A out and play it at parties. Out of the Box's third game, Shipwrecked, was O.K. but didn't get a big call for repeat play.
Now comes the next pair of card games Out of the Box: My Word and Blink, both by Reiner Knizia. Both satisfy the "learn in five minutes, play in half an hour" motto of OotB.