Inkognito ain’t so neato
For some reason, I was compelled to play something tonight. The kids were in bed, but I know Fatty McGee well enough that within ten minutes of starting a flick, he’s going to scream his little lungs out. (Actually, the sweet little monsterpop is sitting right in front of me, prolly with teethies poppin out of his 4-month old gums.)
So, I did the unthinkable and gave Mrs. G a choice. Y’see, she took umbrage with my assertion that she always picks something crappy (read paragraph 1 here) so I did this as a test. Her options were Rat Hot (6.5 on boardgamegeek), or Inkognito (5.2 on boardgamegeek). She chose Inkognito.
Here are the unpunched virgin contents of the box:
What you don’t see in the photo is the one-sheet page titled “two-player rules”. This gave me the heebie-jeebies right away. If this variant wasn’t good enough to get in the actual manual, something was really wrong.
Then, we set up, and the other shoe dropped. In order to play 2-player, basically 60% of the game components need to be removed. The game is already light on stuff, so it felt more than anemic after the removal.
By this time, Mrs. G was already proclaiming, “2-player sucks!” But, we aren’t quitters, so we soldiered on.
At it’s heart, Inkognito is a deduction game, a la Clue (definitely in Mrs. G’s top 10). You play the role of agents each with one of four pieces of the combination to a safe containing… something or other. Each round, you visit places, and if two, and only two agents are in the same place at the investigation phase of the turn, those agents must swap information. This is supposed to represent a secret meeting. Information is represented by cards that show either a name of an agent, or a number in the combination. One of these pieces of information, must be true, and the other… well… honestly, I just don’t care any more.
Here’s what it looked like at the end:?
From the rules, the game looked like it had promise, and I think four-player could be fun. 2-player definitely stinks. If we try it again, I’ll let you know.
BTW, I would have picked Rat Hot. 😉
