The intrigue and excitement of guessing the right words in Codenames continue to make it one of the most popular party games around. It’s easy to learn, and the layout changes every time you play. However, if you’re ready to try something new, we’ve assembled ten great board games like Codenames for you to play with your friends and family.
If you enjoy trying to guess what’s on another player’s mind, like in Codenames, then you’ll have a great time with Wavelength. To start the game, your team draws a card with a pair of opposites written on it. Examples include “hot and cold” or “cheap and expensive”. One of your teammates will sit across the table from you and look at the exact location of the needle on a spectrum. It’s their job to give the rest of your team associated word clues based on the drawn card to help you identify exactly where the needle lies.
The team-based guessing gameplay in Decrypto will immediately feel familiar to fans of Codenames. Each team has a set of four words that only they can they can see. When the round begins, one of the team members will have to communicate the correct sequence of these words without actually saying the words or giving hints to the opposition. Your team collects an interception token when you are able to guess the other team’s sequence. However, you’ll receive a negative marker instead if you fail to communicate your own code first.
Spyfall is a game of secret roles that’s all about detecting the person in your group who secretly knows nothing about where you are. When you begin, you’ll set up a mix of random location cards. Then, you’ll deal a role card to each player. Every player will see the locale for the round on their card, except for the spy, who wins by guessing the correct place. You’ll have to ask and answer a lot of indirect questions to figure out who knows what.
In Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, one of the people at your party table isn’t quite as innocent as they seem. A killer is secretly among you, and your group of detectives will have to interpret the mix of forensic evidence and items next to each player to uncover the truth of what happened last night in the city. A witness to the crime may be able to aid you by identifying relevant locations, weapons, and motives. However, it’s up to you to associate their hints with the numerous clue cards before you.
The Resistance is a spy-themed social deduction game that’s all about guessing which half of the players at the table are on your side. If you support the Resistance, you and your teammates will need to complete three missions. If you’re a spy that favors the Empire, it’s your job to sabotage these quests and make the Resistance team members think that you’re on their side. Everyone gets to vote on who’s going on the missions, which allows everyone to participate right up until the end of the game.
If you love word association games and want to try something that moves a bit quicker than Codenames, The Chameleon is a great pick. At the start of the game, you’ll see a board of sixteen loosely related words. One of these is the Secret Word. The player who draws the chameleon role is trying to blend in with everyone else but doesn’t know the Secret Word. The players rapidly go around the table saying related words and trying to either guess the Secret Word if they’re the chameleon or figure out who amongst them is the imposter.
The classic party game Dixit is an engaging and enjoyable experience for players of all ages. The active player in a given round has to describe the picture on their cards without giving away too much of what it looks like. The goal is to communicate to a few players which card is theirs but leave everyone else in the dark. The other players pick one of their cards that best fits the original card’s description. Then, you reveal all the cards together and let everyone try to guess which card on the table belongs to the active player. There will be more than a few creative and unexpected outcomes when you’re playing this game.
Blank Slate is an easy-to-learn, often hilarious board game that suits groups of all sizes. Your job is to fill in a mad-libs-style cue each round and guess what everyone else will write in the same space. If you write something that’s too obscure or outside the box, and no one else wrote the same answer to the cue, you won’t score any points. As a result, it’s best to predict what everyone will think and brainstorm the most common word associations to ensure that you have the same guess as at least one other player.
If you’re after a social, fiercely competitive contest of words that’s sure to be a hit on game night, then you should definitely play Banned. Every round, the two teams will try to guess the most correct words without using any of the banned ones. If someone accidentally uses one of the banned words as a clue, they immediately lose the round. Since you’re trying to collect as many correct words as possible within a given time limit, you’ve got to think fast, which means making a mistake is all too easy.
The exciting cooperative communication game Just One is great fun for anyone who loves Codenames. Everyone in the group except for one person looks at a card with a word on it. Then, everyone but the selected player will need to write out a clue to the word that doesn’t directly name it. If your clue matches that of another player, then you’ll have to erase it. The excitement of the game comes from finding the perfect sweet spot between an obvious hint and an obscure one.
