Time to go from hard, cooperative, and scary to easy, semi-cooperative, and light-hearted. Though saying this game is easy is a bit misleading.  At least the game itself can’t win.

Hit the jump to prove the pass rule.

Visitor in Blackwood Grove is essentially a board game of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. The visitor crash lands and everyone is trying to get into its forcefield.  Just like any alien, it can’t speak the human tongue but it understands pictures! That means this is a picture association game. Which of these belong and which doesn’t.

The hardest part is trying to think of a passcode/rule that lets only certain things get through the forcefield. Thankfully the game provides a small number of ideas in hopes to get the juices flowing or just give beginners options to try out such as things made of metal. You can always think of one yourself using the cards you start with. I had a difficult time deciding on one the other night but I swapped out cards and something came to me. My visitor was captured by a government agent so I probably should’ve swapped out the cards again.

As I said, the game can’t win but it is still semi-cooperative since the kid works with the visitor but the government agents are sort of working together but not. They all can win or just one of them. It is an interesting dynamic going on that works nicely.

Each of the three roles plays differently and there is a lot of pressure on the kid to guess correctly as it gives them (kid and visitor) more powers and ways to keep their actions hidden. Hopefully by the time we have some of the good skills like hiding cards and drawing more cards, the agents haven’t figured it out.

Visitor is a friendly game about not trusting the government…or guessing with pictures…one of those two.

Visitor in Blackwood Groove
Resonym
3-6 players
15-30 minutes