Quick Facts
Age range: 8 and up
Play time: 3 to set up, 30-45 to play
# of Players: 3-10
Price point: $24.99
What color is “grape”? Do you see grape jelly, grape soda, white grapes, red grapes, or the peculiar brown of a grape stem?
Welcome to the quandary presented by Hues and Cues from The OP. In a world filled with “describe the word” games, Hues and Cues gives you a palette of 480 varied colors and asks you to describe one of them well enough that your fellow players can at least come close to finding it.
Get in touch with your inner chromatic visionary as we splash into a board game rainbow. Everybody into the pool!
Easy to Start#
Right out of the box, Hues and Cues lets you know that it’s designed for a light and fast player experience. A single fold-out page of rules covers everything from unpacking the game to playing, scoring, and ending a round.
One tip: When assembling the four-piece scoring frame, just make sure the “1” sides face out and the “2” sides face in. The color spectrum bars along the bottom only match evenly on two corners, so don’t spend too much thought on it (like I did).
Draw a Card, Pick a Color#
One player each round is the “cue giver” and the rest are “guessers.”
The cue giver draws a card and selects one of the card’s four color options as the target for this round. The other players will listen to the cue giver’s clues (or perhaps just one clue; more about that in a moment) and try to place one of their pawns on the matching color.
Giving Clues — er, Cues#
The cue giver always provides one initial clue of exactly one word. The rules specify that the clue can’t be the common name of a color (yellow, red, or green), the name of any object in the room where you’re playing, or contain either of the board coordinates of the color (like “E” for a color in that column).
But the clue absolutely can be a more abstract color name, like sunflower, stop (referring to a stop sign), or forest. That’s where you fire up your creativity and look for associations to help the players figure out your chosen color.
After the players make their choices (covered in the next section), you have the option of giving a second clue of one or two words. You can also choose to not give a second clue, thus preventing the other players from potentially increasing their score.
When you play the game for the first time, keep the rules open to the section on giving the first and (optional) second clues. You’ll probably find yourself reading and re-reading that section a few times to make sure you’re doing things right.
It’s not that the rules are complicated (they aren’t), but because the clue mechanic lives at the very center of the game, so the rules are pretty specific.
Playing and Scoring#
Once a clue is given, the guessing players put one of their pawns onto a color space. Only one pawn can be on a space, so players need to choose wisely. (And if you like trash-talking in your party games, feel free to insert that dialog into the .)
For the first clue, guessing players make their choices in clockwise order. For the second clue (if one is given), they choose in counter-clockwise order.
After all choices are made, the cue giver places the square scoring frame so that the chosen color is in the middle of the frame.
The cue giver gets one point for every pawn inside the frame. Guessing players get 3 points for matching the exact color, 2 points for picking another spot in the frame, and 1 point for any spot around the outside edge of the frame (including diagonals). Guesses more than one square away from the frame earn no points.
Not Color Blind Friendly#
Perhaps this is obvious, but it’s still worth saying out loud: This game is not for someone who can’t see colors or has visual impairment issues.
The game’s 480 colors spread across the board in a gorgeous spray worthy of framing for a graphic designer’s wall. But everything in the game hinges on color perception.
The vast majority of tabletop games include a secondary characteristic to any element that focuses on color so they’re more accessible. But since colors are the whole point of Hues and Cues, there’s no secondary characteristic to add that wouldn’t unbalance the game for everyone else.
If you can think of a solution to the problem, we encourage you to contact the manufacturer and suggest it, because nothing we came up with could do it.
Verdict#
With its exclusive focus on colors and how we see them, Hues and Cues lives in a unique party game niche.
We see it being especially good for larger groups or even teams because of the lively discussions it can drive thanks to the fact that everybody has an opinion on color. (Okay, and because of the hysterical what-do-you-mean-it’s-green-when-that’s-clearly-blue moments as well.)