Codenames

Welcome to Replayable, where we go into depth on our favorite tabletop games that keep us coming back again and again. I'm the start player Todd, and today I'm joined by Megan and Paul. For our 13th episode, we will have a clear text discussion about the party game Codenames. It was designed by Vladek Václav and was released in 2015 by Czech Games Edition with artwork by Stefan Ganties, Tomáš Kucerovský and Filip Murmak. Prepared to?

I'm Megan and I'm totally prepared for today's podcast. I've got four different copies of Codenames next to me. Awesome. I'm Paul. I'll pick take and shot. In Codenames, players are divided into two teams, red versus blue. The teams compete to see who can make contact with all of their agents first. Agents are represented in a five by five grid. Spymasters give one word clues that can point to multiple words on

the board. Their teammates try to guess words of the right color while avoiding those that belong to the opposing team or are innocent neutral bystanders. And everyone wants to avoid the assassin. The first team to have all of their agents revealed wins while contacting the assassin automatically loses. Tell me about the first time you saw or played this game because for me, I got to say this

game feels like it could be a TV show. I mean, there is great entertainment value even in watching it be played. Megan? I will say I heard about this game before I had the opportunity to play it. And what I heard was there's a new word game that's a party game by the person who designed Mage Knight. And I was like, what? I had played Mage Knight. And so I was like, what is happening here? I'm not understanding this. So I was so surprised and really wanted to try it.

And I was actually just looking through my log of played games of this and saw that I was playing a whole bunch with you guys back in 2015. And it was, you know, obviously being played regularly as a filler then. So I think it was pretty hot. It was pretty exciting there at the start. Yeah, I don't recall. I think I remember seeing people play it at our Monday night get togethers back when that used to be, you know, 20, 30 people. And I think my first thought was,

is this just Dixit with words? But I do remember that after I got to play it, I just wanted to play it over and over and over again. What drew me in was that each agent card, red and blue, harken to a specific actor or actress from a spy movie. And I just love that. And the TV show feel for me is especially present in Codenames Duet because of the back and forth to a communication it forces the players to use.

Got it. You know, I never really thought about that, about trying to recognize all the different ones. But you're right. Now that I think about those agent tiles and the pictures that are on them, that might actually be a fun exercise to go through and see if I can source the different movies and shows that they came from. For sure. I think the only one I've always thought was Jamie Lee Curtis. Oh yeah, that's a good giveaway. Will Smith, Tom Selleck.

I always think Activia commercial. So I wasn't making the connection to True Lies, but that makes much more sense as part of this game. That is fantastic. I first played this game at BGGCon back in 2015. One of the things that I really liked about it was the clues you gave really depended on the people you were playing with on your team and what you had in common.

The clues I might give for a bunch of people, you know, middle aged like myself, would be very different than if I was playing with a bunch of younger players and we didn't have maybe the shared life experiences, but we had the same love of say board games. I really liked that aspect of trying to find the common ground so that way you could create more effective clues. I totally agree. Paul, you mentioned how you liked the integration of the spy theme, especially with the two

player game, which is Codenames Duet. How do you feel about the way that the game has been tweaked, if you will, because there are a lot of different versions of this game. I think of it as there are at least three different versions between the base game pictures and Duet, and then they have a lot of themed versions layered on top. Talk to me about your thoughts on how the game has morphed or evolved. Well for me, pictures just made it go back to being Dixit. I adore Codenames Duet because

I don't see it as a two player game. I see it as a two plus player game. It is just Codenames Duet transformed into a cooperative game that can be played by any number of players. What I especially like about Duet is take one turn as a spy master and then you immediately take one turn as the guesser and then you immediately take another turn as a spy master instead of being stuck as the spy master for the entire game or as a guesser.

That is fascinating. I have never thought about playing that game with more than two people, but you're right. That is blowing my mind, Todd. I mean, we'll get into this later with the prompts, but to me, once Duet came out, it replaced Codenames for me. I don't really see a reason to play Codenames as the rules are in the original version anymore. I love playing Duet no matter how many people I'm with.

Okay. Is it for that same reason that Paul just said that you get to take turns being both a spy master and the other players on the team? Yeah. I really enjoy that there's not that same pressure. There is that feeling of we are working on it together. Something about that just made this game sing for me when I was probably at a point where I was maybe done with Codenames. It was exciting to find a mechanic and a way of playing that engaged me again and at this point still engages me.

Okay. Do we want to spend a few minutes and talk about the app that's been in beta for a while? As far as I know, it recently shut down the beta run as they get ready to actually release it. Sure. Yeah. The app includes some really thematic music, which I think helped me get in the mood. How far did you go with playing the app? Did you play it up until the end? Was it something you dabbled in? What did you like about the way that they took the base game and presented it for an online format?

I'll say I heard about the beta test for the app from a board game fan Discord that I'm part of and then was able to share with our group of friends. At first it was just exciting it was this thing that we were in that was like being beta tested. So that made it feel special and then that it was a group of- A little exclusive? Yeah. And then there was, you know, our group of friends was all playing together and so

that made it exciting. And then there was the piece of discovery of the way the app worked is you were essentially unlocking modes as you played and figuring out how that worked. And they have some really interesting use of AI in the app that made it pretty fun and

made it feel pretty innovative. Yeah. I mean, Paul brought them up earlier, but some of the game modes that they were able to do in the app that would not be practical to do if you were playing, you know, a physical tabletop version of the game just made it really exciting. I'm really curious what the response is going to be to the app once it's out there because you can go play Codenames for free on their website, but I think the

app adds a lot more than what's just there on the website. I'm curious how it'll be priced and yeah, I think the community could be really excited about it. Yeah. I was playing it every day. I think at the beginning I was spending over an hour every day playing it. Whoa. And I was really chasing the achievements and unlocking, especially your avatar. They allowed you to unlock different avatars. So once I got the snowman though,

I was set. And yeah, I loved some of the game modes. I remember playing with Todd this game called Minesweeper where you automatically got clues about how many of your cards were next to every guess you made. And it just meant that your first several turns of guessing you would just not get very far. And then on your fifth turn, you could guess all seven clues. Right? You can clear the board. Yeah. And they had a lot of gadgets like stopping

time for your opponent team or rewinding a mistake. It really adds a lot to the game. I hope that it has a successful launch. Yeah. I really enjoyed being part of the jury. After I played long enough, I was given the opportunity to join the jury. And my guess is anyone would be able to once they play long enough and then you would get a notification. Hey, will you rule on this? And essentially you would get to rule on a clue someone had given that

the app didn't already recognize as being valid. And you would get to determine based on the rules of the game, whether it was a valid clue or not. And I just really enjoyed being able to do that. It felt really fun to participate that way as part of the community and not have that go back to the app developer or their staff to review. But that as a community, we got to do that. Yeah, I did that too. I remember I agreed with the majority vote like

19 times out of 20, but that one time I did not agree at all. And I remember reporting it to the developer. This should not have been approved. Oh, did it get approved? Yeah. And I was very against it. I don't remember what the word was though. I was also on the jury and I think everyone that I voted against was declined because a lot of times it was just someone trying to sneak two words merged together and see if they could sneak that

one by. But I agree Paul that Minesweeper game was fun. I thought team versus assassin, which it was more cooperative. You could play with your friends, not necessarily against them. That was interesting. And then things that you could theoretically do in person if you had a way to create the grid, but like they would create like 10 by 10 grids and

those games like took forever. You could do it if you could generate the card that shows you where your agents are versus where the other enemy agents are for the spy masters to work from. You could do that with a physical copy. It would just, it would be a much longer

game, but I really liked the creativity that they showed. Yes, agreed. Yeah. Like those modes where there would be the puzzles where it was, we're going to show multiple people this grid of cards, you know, and come up with a clue and we're going to show you here are seven valid cards for you. You come up with a clue that's going to work for the most

people for the most cards. And then they would have other players go up against that. And then after a certain amount of time or a certain amount of people did it, they would show you the results. So there were ways to train yourself to become a better code names player. Yes, that was my master training. It was excellent. Now, granted, I also think some of that was training their AI. So that's exactly what I was going to say. You know what we were

doing, right? We were really training the AI with that, but it was still fun. But yes, super fun and not something I would have ever thought to do just with my code names cards. Yeah. I, I feel like I became a better spy master by going through that because every

time I was beat by somebody else's clue, I learned something. Right. But I also learned that sometimes just the way the points worked out, sometimes it was better to put an easy two out there and get everybody to guess a hundred percent than it was to stretch for a three and then fumble the ball because you know, the third one didn't have as strong a connection or whatever the plus one value was do an easy three as opposed to going for

four. Yeah. That's ultimately the why I, I slowed down on my play because I feel like my skill advanced to the point where I got frustrated playing with people. I don't know. I'm like with, with all my friends, I could give great clues, but now with some total rando I have to go down to these two word clues. Yeah. Let's call them generics. Yeah. But again, it's that thing that I talked about where you try to find the common ground so

you can give more effective clues. And in that online experience where all of the identity information is masked from you because we were all using usernames and such, we have to go to the lowest common denominator as far as clue giving. Yeah. Not as much fun, but there was a play with friends option where all the identification was there and everybody

drew who everybody else was. And those were my favorite place of the app. So moving along those same lines of ways that you are able to improve your clue giving or the benefits of playing with friends that you know, were there any strategies that you developed as a spy master or levels to your realization of the game as you became more experienced with it? One of the strategies I'm still trying to teach my wife and she resists is to not

fear the bystanders as the spy master. Big early clues that may hit a couple bystanders are still great clues. Right. Especially if by eliminating them early, you set yourself up for a bigger run later. I was just going to say I'm thinking through and I don't think anything about my play changed with playing the app. So I don't I don't have a response, which maybe that is a black mark on me. Well, I don't mean it necessarily for the app either.

So the easy one is when you start playing, you look for the connections between your cards, right? And so you're going to look at it and say, okay, great, that that I see some here and I'm going to give an answer that talks to two or three of my cards. And then the next level, and it's an easy one to get to is recognizing that you may have accidentally clued an assassin or clued the other team's card. So that's like the next

level in recognizing. So I was thinking more along those lines. Any other thoughts or strategies? Yeah. So one thing I think I skilled up with while using the app is how to find really big clues like cluing five or six cards. You can't start by looking for connections between

the cards because it's just a forest you're going to get lost in. What you do instead is you start with a complete non sequitur, like maybe a cardinal direction or a movie title or an emotion, and then see if there's lots of cards that can fit that outside the box word. Okay, I had seen instances of that. That's so interesting. I'm like, when it comes down to it, for me, I think we are more likely to consider connections between cards that

are near each other. So that is often just a strategy for me as a spymaster are what are the connections between eligible cards that are close to each other that my team might be able to see. The other is I think sometimes just cards where I can build some sort of alliteration or rhyming because I think people are thinking through those things and they're saying those words and sometimes they're even saying them out loud to themselves. And so- But Megan, isn't that against the rules?

Is it? I don't even know. It's been so long since I've looked at the rules. I'm saying giving a clue that rhymes with one of the cards. Oh, yes. No, no, no. I would never give a rhyming clue. However, if words on the board are caboose and goose, I might try to give you a clue that connects those two because you might connect them because of the rhyme without me giving a clue that I'm not going to say something that rhymes with those. Is that making sense? Totally.

Yeah. As a guesser, I always, like you said, look at cards next to each other because it's so much easier for the spymaster to connect adjacent cards. So when I'm guessing, I tend to try and pick cards that are very close in proximity. Todd, do you have strategies? Every now and then I would try to find one. If the clue could be well connected. So let's

say that I had thunder and lizard and I did dinosaur too, right? Either one of those, word will get there, but thunder won't unless you recognize that's what dinosaur is supposed to mean. Sometimes I enjoyed trying those clues where you needed to find two or three words and then they really made sense when looked at in total as opposed to their individual meanings. You're not supposed to use clues for homonyms or excuse me, homophones either

way. And that was always a challenge if someone tried to slip one of those by, but sometimes if a word had different meanings or different pronunciations for the same spelling. Like that. Right. That was sometimes hard for me to catch as a field operative. And that's what you are on the other team members. Oh, thank you.

Someone would do that for me. I would always have to go through and like say the clue word and whatever word I was evaluating and put it at the front and at the back and see if it made sense because I was just like trying to figure out, okay, I understand that they mean this as the flying animal, but did they mean this as a piece of sports equipment or whatever else you might have like batting an eye? Yeah. I learned that there's another meaning to the word goat.

It's also an acronym. My wife taught me that. I wish our listeners all knew you very well, Paul, so that they could enjoy that as much as those of us who know you will enjoy that. Absolutely. I think you had said something about a most memorable experience. Yeah. And I just wanted to share that my wife gave me a six clue one time and I got it. And that was super memorable. Right. It was Zootopia six and I was able to just pick out all six cards from the field. Awesome.

And we were both just, I mean, the game could have ended right there. We didn't care. It was such a great moment. And was that the last time you played the game? No. You did not mic drop and walk away from it after that? No, it was not. We really enjoy playing Codename Zootopia together. The one experience I remember and I was playing with some friends who are in the aerospace industry and one of the words, you know, there were some military sounding words and then

there was like Pentagon. And so I had done something like military four and they got the easy ones and then they were looking at me and they were trying to figure out if I included Pentagon in the clue. And they were like saying, would Todd have done that? And they're like staring at me waiting for me to break, you know, and give them any clue one way or the other as to whether or not I may have incorporated it.

So that's one of my fond memories of the game is like how steel faced poker faced you have to be when you're the spymaster playing in person so that you don't give anything away. If you're playing by the rules. Well, yeah. A lot of groups don't. Okay. What's raising one eyebrows ever so slightly? Are you going to get away with that? Or going, oh, oh, right. Now that's I'll save that for another game. Well, we may talk about here during the prompts.

All right, Megan, do you have a memorable experience? I don't. It's been a while since I've played code names. It feels like it was one of those where it, you know, shown hot and bright and then kind of fell away in my sphere. Well, I think it definitely was riding a wave of party games for a while. I mean, there were a lot of them that were released and obviously it's still a very strong genre.

One of the things and maybe we can talk about it here when we start looking at what may have replaced it, but I think there have been some other candidates that have since eclipsed it. It doesn't lessen its impact or its enjoyment as a game. There's just a lot of other options out there. So let's jump in weight or complexity on BGG scale of one to five, which also aligns with how board game arena manages complexity on that site. How would you rate the weight of code names, Megan?

It's a one. I feel like this is the most obvious. It's a one, but that's great. It's so easy to set up, easy to teach and it's easy to play and win, which is great. We need games like that, right? Not every game should be a five. I also think this is just a silly thing, but years ago, some of you may remember that on board game geek, some of our friends set up an amazing race that a few of us participated in. For that, we did a scavenger hunt that

was timed. One of the items on the scavenger hunt was set up a board game according to the rules of that board game. I set up Flux, which was the easiest thing in the world to set up and I felt like, oh, I'm such a genius for doing this. But code names, it wouldn't take that much longer to set up, which is great. That's fun for a party game. It works for the mechanic. I'm still trying to understand what that means. Set up a board game according to the rules

of the board. You mean just set it up on the table and take a picture? Yes. Right, right, right. You can't just unbox and put the board out. If you need to do things to set it up for each of the players, what they're starting, coin counts. People literally had opened up baggies and here are all your pieces and everything. They were meticulous. I remember... We've learned that at one point in time Megan owned Flux. I probably still do. I'm not ashamed.

She has threatened to bring it to game night. I have so many versions of Munchkin. Okay. There it is. Watch out. All right. So Paul, how about you for weight or complexity? I'm trying to get over this fear. Flux? Okay. So Munchkin. I agree with Megan. It's a one. However, I have known and played with several people who would probably see it higher because of their difficulty with being the spy master. Okay. I can see that. I also had it as a one. I mean, the basic premise is very simple,

right? Contact your agents and do so without revealing the other teams or an assassin. So I think as far as the rules go, right, this one's not very heavy. But let's move on to strategy. Same scale, one to five. Does your score change here, Paul? I went with two. There's things that the field agents can do like paying attention to the opposing team, remembering the words of the opposing spy master. Yes.

Thinking deeply about what Megan pointed out earlier. So I think it's not as simple as some other games are. You bring up an interesting thing that I really appreciated about the app actually was when you were playing the game, you had the list of what the previous clues were, including

the other teams. So that often came in handy. And like when I play some person, we don't keep a paper trail of what people said, but maybe we should because that helped out when you were trying to avoid cards that had already been clued by the other team. Or even remember old clues from your own spy master that maybe he is not cluing again because he feels you'll remember what they were. Exactly. So Megan, thoughts on strategy?

I said one, I do think there is a little bit there, but not much. I think there can also be some for the spy master in, okay, let's say I'm giving you a clue for two cards, but I hope that you remember, you hit that bystander last term, but there's one more word out there remaining. So maybe instead of saying my clue two, I'm going to say three because maybe I even have two cards out there that I'm hoping that you're going to get. So I think sometimes

thinking about that number choice is part of the strategy there. So I do think there are opportunities and in my notes, I had exactly what Paul said, paying attention to how the other team clues I think is something that a lot of beginners miss. Yeah, absolutely. I also had it down as a two, so I will side with Paul on this one, although I see where you're going with the one and it's easy to hone in on what the spy

master is required to do. But I think about it from that perspective, it requires multiple levels of recognition and association, both for identification and avoidance. And then the last part that kept creeping up when I played code names, the original version was the need for a good vocabulary, being able to not just understand the words that are

out there. And it's like the words that are presented are overly difficult, but trying to find a word that's going to bridge the gap between two or three becomes more of a challenge. So I had strategy down as a two just because there were multiple, multiple obstacles that didn't make this an easy. Yeah, vocabulary is a great point, Todd. You know, I'm reminded as well of a special game mode in the app, which was zero or infinity. Right. You could only give zero or infinity

clues in that game mode. And that's something that in real life, I see spy masters rarely use. I never played that one. I love what you just said about vocabulary, because in thinking about code names, I think there's not only the vocabulary just from a pure word knowledge standpoint, but also like your cultural vocabulary in that if you're able to know that your team will understand a reference, if you make a connection for a movie or music or something, that can also

be very helpful. So yeah, that was a very good point. All right. So moving on to luck. How much do you think luck plays a factor in this game? Same scale, one to five million? I would say a two. There's no dice rolling. There's none of that happening here. However, there's times where that board has three cities on it and two of them are yours and one of them is the assassin. And so you have to find a way to connect those two cities without

saying cities, because that is going to lose you. And there's not really much you can do about that assassin placement. So that's the luck piece to me. That was a great answer, Megan. I also say too, but for me, it's because of meta reasons. You're just not on the same wavelength with your field agents. And it could be for completely non-game reasons. It's just one bad day of the week. And the next time you guys play together, everything's going to be great again.

Wow. Okay. So I had this down as a one. And that was just because I felt like the only time luck came into it was when you drew that key card to find out which words in the grid were yours versus which one belonged to the other team and which one was the assassin. So other than that, it's completely player determined. But I do like the idea of sometimes you get caught between a rock and a hard place and you've got two words in an assassin that

all share something in common. And do you get lucky and have your teammates choose the right ones? All right. Theme. So how much do we think the theme has been integrated into this word game? We talked about a little. I rated it a four. I surprisingly think it's well integrated in spite of the low number of components. Okay. I said a three. I do think the game mechanic fits with the theme and vice versa really

well. To me, the issue is, you know, when I compare this to a game like Wingspan that I said had a five for integration of the theme, that theme is integrated across multiple mechanics. Codenames got one mechanic. And so, you know, the theme is integrated into that one, but it's nothing elaborate. Right. Yeah. I also had it down as a three. I still think of this game as a potential game show game. Someone can make either a YouTube channel or something like that where

people are playing this in a highly produced way. And the graphics, I mean, I don't particularly feel like a secret agent, but it's a lot of fun that they carry that over. So I believe that the theme is more than just superficial on this. And it's a good one. I think they did well in the production of both the graphics for the game itself, the physical copies, as well as the app. So favorite player count. And maybe we talk about this based on version of the game too, because that could change.

That's what I did. Okay. Well, then let's hear it. For code names or even pictures, I prefer six or more. Okay. I think you need teams of three going at it to have the optimal experience. But for Duet, I think it's great at any player account. Any player account and not just divisible by two? Yeah. Yeah. I've played it. Well, maybe three players isn't so good. Every other player account. Okay. Mayim, what did you have?

I agree entirely with Paul. I think six or more is great if you're playing the traditional version. I like that much better than four, just because I think there's so much pressure for the field agent and the clue giver there. You got to give that right clue that they're going to get and they better understand that clue that you gave. So I think it's nice if there's more people. I think that just takes the pressure off a little bit and makes it

feel more fun and party game-ish. But yeah, Duet, I would happily play it at most any player account. Okay. I'm going to stick to just the base game because like I said earlier, I hadn't thought about playing Duet at higher than two. For me, eight is the best player account for the base game. And I understand that it can be played at more than that or less. But I think that having a team of three field operatives is optimal for everyone to have some say.

I think when you start getting to more than that, some people might feel left out of the discussion. And what's nice about having a spymaster plus a team of three is that someone can always be the tiebreaker, right? So it helps move the game along. I think when you start getting too many players, it starts to drag as everyone has something to contribute. So for those reasons, if I move on to the next one, least favorite player account, for

me on the base game, it would be 10 or more. Yes, it can be done, but I would prefer not to do it. Maybe break it down into two separate games of code names if you have that many people. What are your thoughts on least favorite player accounts? I would say I think that eight plus, the box says this can play eight plus. And I think at that point, it's just too likely that someone checks out or someone takes over as a decision

maker or deliberation takes too long. I like to keep it a little tighter than that. Okay. Paul? I've never experienced the game with 10 or more. So I didn't even think about it. And I just said three players is least favorite player account. Well, that makes sense. So actual playing time, what the box says that it plays in 15 minutes. Has that been your experience? That's been my experience. Megan, you as well? Yes. And I love for our listeners, Todd's notes for this prompt say boxes lie, but I

think the code name doesn't lie. I think we've found the exception that proves the rule here. Yeah. So for me, boxes lie. The fastest game I've played logged in at 20 minutes and the longest one took 30, like 32. I've yet to play this game in 15 minutes and I'm not including the app. I don't log the app plays. I haven't played one where there was an early assassin

hit and the game was over in two minutes to change that. Yeah. For me, it's a little bit longer and maybe we should be taking advantage of that timer that is almost a miscellaneous component in the box. Which edition of the game is the best? And I think here we can have quite the discussion because we've talked about the base game pictures, Duet, there are the themes and I think there are arguments to be made for several of them. So what are your thoughts about the best edition of the game?

Well Megan and I have already stated our opinion on this. The only thing that Codenames has as an improvement over Duet is tension, trying to beat an opponent. But other than that, I prefer Duet for all the reasons we've already talked about. Okay. Megan, anything to add or? Yeah. I mean, I had any answer other than Duet is wrong in my notes here. Wow. Yeah. For me, I do feel that strongly about it. So would this be a good time for me to

add in that I do own an edition other than Duet pictures and the base game. It's now the time for me to talk about the other copy that I own. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So my husband, spouse of Megan, previously worked for Blizzard Entertainment, which is a video game studio that makes Warcraft and Starcraft, Overwatch. And in 2019, their winter holiday gift to employees was a limited edition, I mean, I think it just went out to employees

Blizzard version of Codenames. And so that was fun to get it. I don't know that it's something we would have sought out on our own, but we have it and it's fun to have it as part of my board game library. We did try playing it once and have never attempted playing

it again. The way the cards are set up is one side has pretty generic video game terms, you know, terms that fit with the games they make like elf or innkeeper or hive or level, you know, terms that you're like, okay, I can imagine building a board and being able to make connections here and be able to do this. However, the other side of the cards is all names of specific Blizzard characters from their various games and potentially from

their books or other media that references Blizzard lore. And it is impossible. You know, my husband, my husband worked at Blizzard for five years. We have, you know, been longtime fans of the games that the company makes. And I've even read some of the books. I mean, I'm someone who I think is somewhat steeped in their IP and you know, some of these names like this card has Kael'thas. Okay, that's that that's from World of Warcraft. I've

got that. But then there's Char and Lili and Manxt. I have no idea. And so, you know, so Charles of Tenet in Starcraft and Arcturus Manxt was the Terran dictator from Starcraft. I mean, hey, come on now. I'm sorry, I didn't remember any of that. And that's, you know, it gets just super hard in there to a point where I'm like, oh, I would never be able to make a connection because I wouldn't even even if someone gave me like the perfect clue for this, unless you're giving

me Thrall and Jaina Proudmoore and you know, names that everyone's going to know. Right. I'm just not going to make it happen. So we pull out Duet much more often than we pull out anything else here from our code name shelf. So now I'm imagining someone going to like Artscout and creating a physical deck of Hearthstone cards and playing code names with Hearthstone cards. Well, cool. I have not played any of

the themed ones. I know in our group, there's a copy of the Harry Potter one. I don't think anyone has the Marvel, but I've seen that one released, but I haven't played any of the themed versions. But I did like that capability within the app where you were able to say, I want to play a game and I want to use my collection of words from movies or from sci-fi or nature. So that was fun.

Yeah, I am really curious for the other, you know, the Disney branded set, whatever, is it set up the same way where one side is more general terms and the other side is more specific or if this Blizzard version is truly just a bizarre one off or if it's similar in configuration to the others. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. That'd be good to find out. Apparently on this one, I am wrong because I think pictures is the best version. Fascinating. And that has to do with me taking

it to like New Year's Eve parties with friends. And the original game, because of the vocabulary issue was fun, but some people were put off by it. And so the next year I brought pictures and the ability to find links between the cards was a lot easier when they were visual and more people had fun playing pictures. Interesting. When it comes to physical copies. And again, I'm going to say I haven't played Duet with more than just two people. I think that pictures is the best version of the game.

Which recognizable comparison? What's the highest ranking game that reminds you the most of code names? And I will allow each of you to go first because I feel like there are a couple of easy answers and I don't want to step on anyone's toes. I went with Dixit, like I said before, that was my first association with the game. And in Dixit, the spy master is trying to give a clue that only one person at the table will

get. And so that's not at all what code names is, but it's still, I think, exercises the same word association muscles of, well, in this case, picture association, but trying to come up with a word or several words to get someone to reference, but not everyone. Code names, I think, is much easier in that you're just trying to come up with a connection, but I still, because of my first experience, connect the two games.

Interesting. Go ahead, Megan. So I'm going to take a really obvious one here and say decrypto. Yep. That was one I was trying to avoid taking. I think code names walked so decrypto could run. It seems like they took some ideas there and just got really creative and built on that foundation. It's another word game with teams where you are working to clue words, but then the difficulty gets ramped up all the way to a level because you need to clue words well enough so that your partner knows,

but not so well that the other team can guess. And I think it's super fun. And yeah, I think that is what immediately comes to mind for me. Yeah, I agree. The idea that you are not just trying to remember what the previous clues were, but let's start out. They include a pad of papers that you can record what the clues were and you can keep track of what they were, but then you can try to intercept the other team's clues is an improvement upon code names of just trying to avoid the other

team's words. So I think that's a really good one. I had another one just in case one of you went with decrypto and I had so Clover down for this. That was just because the idea of interpreting the clues that were written on the plastic Clover to then arrange the clue cards in their proper sequence and rotation orientation just felt similar as far as it's not really a grid because it's on the Clover, but it had something similar and was a word

game and I think is another clever modification of that idea. Although that one is purely cooperative so there's no competition going on. Yeah, I love so Clover. Great. So less recognizable comparison. What did you have for one that may not be as high up on BGG's rankings that reminds you of code names? Megan, why don't you go first? Sure. So I had password. You know, we've been talking this whole episode about this

feels like it could be on a game show. Well, there's somewhat simplified version of this that was a game show password. There's a board game version of that where you know, you are giving a one word clue for someone to guess one word. Yeah, an oldie but a goodie. That's a great one. Paul, how about you? Yeah, I'll use this chance to talk about a favorite word association game of mine, celebrities, also known as Hat Game or Fishbowl or Time's Up or Moniker.

Okay. Basically, the players create a stack of cards, a deck of celebrity names or other names if they want and you go through the deck with a timer with the first round being like simplified taboo, where you're just you're allowed to clue the word by saying anything as long as you don't say part of the name, right? And then you do it all over again. But this time

you only use a single word kind of like code names. Yeah. And then in a third round, where everybody already remembers all the names in the stack, you play charades to get the names. I love that game. That's a really fun one. That's a great suggestion. So I went with another team versus team word game only this one uses the tried and true trope of hidden traitors. And that's where

words. Nice. The idea that you're going to have someone there that's trying to mislead the group by suggesting branching clues and maybe take you down a rat hole that makes you run out of time and trying to figure that out. That's a fun one that we've enjoyed in our group. I know. I also just don't want us to leave this section of the podcast without mentioning just one. Okay. Because I think this is another, you know, word game party game and where you're trying

to help someone guess and there's a whole team of people cluing to one guesser. And of course the difficulty comes from if two of you come up with the same clue, then you can't show that at all. So it's trying to come up with clues that are effective, but that won't be guessed. And then there's that double think of, well, if no one gives the obvious clue, then it's going to be really hard for the guesser. So someone's got to,

so can I do it? You know, there's that dilemma there. And I think that is, is right up there and comparable to code names. Yeah. I love just one too bad. One person in our group doesn't. Is that a joke? No, Dave, Dave refuses to play. Well, you know, it's interesting because just one actually accomplished the same feat as code names. So code names won the Spiel des Jahres in 2016 and then just one, one in 2019.

So they are both quality games and who knows, we may have a prompt that comes along for which that could be your answer or someone's answer. So house rules, how would you improve code names or any of the other versions? So if you, if it's improve code names by playing code names to it, I got it. But outside of that, you know, it's really group dependent. Like I remember I went on a vacation this summer and I played with some old friends of mine and their spy masters were talking while the

field agents were guessing. And I'm like, you let your spy masters talk. You let, you let them react to things. Wow. What kind of norms do you have here? It was really interesting. So I would consider those house rules. Yeah. And honestly, the book says that as long as the spy masters agree, any clue is acceptable. So sometimes I like to play with multi-word clues, especially if my kids are involved. Got it. Okay. Megan, did I step on your answer? Was it really to play code names to it?

I said play every version duet style was my answer here in my notes. So now I'm wondering what else I would say. I can't imagine something I think about with this game is how, you know, my group of friends in high school had a million and one inside jokes in a way that I just don't have in any of my adult friend groups. Right. And I can imagine playing like even coming up with our own deck of cards for just all these terms or whatever that are part

of our inside jokes and how that would have delighted teenage me and my friends. That might be making your own custom set of words relevant to you could be a cool like house rule way to play. Nice. Yeah. You know, you just melted my brain in a way though, because you said play any version duet style. And here I am saying pictures is the best version. I can't play pictures duet style with the components in pictures alone, because I need those grid card, those

key cards that are set up for duet, but I could do it. I could merge the two and play pictures duet style. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. All right. That's the next way I'm playing this game. All right. So if this game is being played at game night, then what do you want to play afterwards? And because this game could be considered a lighter game, I'll open it up and say, what would you play before it? What would be the double feature for a game night of which code names would be one?

Well, I went with a quadruple feature. Let's hear it. I would play code names, one night ultimate werewolf celebrities and eat poop you cat. All the greatest party games. Okay. So we're doing that Monday. Yeah. I like it. I think that should be one of our game nights. We'll just set it up and make it happen. We need all hands on deck though. We do. Yeah. That's going to prior the full crew. Megan, how about you?

You know, I was having trouble coming up with a pairing for this. I did have a strong feeling that I would want to play another game where no one's on the spot. So for instance, to reference another episode of the podcast, I would not want to play mind MGMT with this, even though, you know, kind of theme wise, that could be a fun night. Yeah.

But it's another game where someone's on the spot and feeling that pressure. And so I think after this, I'd rather play something where that's not the case. Right. Or something like maybe Mysterium, right? Also, don't want to be the one person on the spot on that one, even though it's collaborative. It's not being competitive. So for this one, I went with actually the one that Paul's been talking about throughout

the podcast and that was Dixit. And I want to say that Dixit isn't just getting one person in. It's that you don't want everyone to get it right. At least that's how I think it works. Yes, that is correct. But you want the least amount of points given out when it's your turn to clue. Right. Okay. That would be by having a single person get your card. Got it. And what I like about Dixit even still is it's almost a storytelling event. It's

like, can I come up with a story behind the card? So the reason I chose it to pair with Codenames is Codenames is all about brevity coming up with that one word clue and Dixit, you can spin a yarn if you want, as long as it's obfuscated enough that not everyone is going to understand which card you're indicating with it. All right, moving on. If you like fill in the blank, then you're going to like Codenames. This might be an easy one. I don't

know. I'm interested to hear what you guys have to say. I said word puzzles and spy stories. Yep, absolutely. Yeah, I think, you know, the obvious answer is party games. I think just in line with what Paul said, I think if you're a crossword puzzler, then I think this game has appeal. Yep. And I said party games, especially ones that feel like TV shows. I'm not going to let go of that because I, I literally am surprised and probably Megan,

you hit it on the head. It's like, password was a game like $64,000 pyramid was a game and this feels like it could slide right in and be a show like that. So if you like that kind of feeling, then you're going to enjoy Codenames. But if you don't like fill in the blank, then you're not going to like Codenames. Did you have some answers for this one? Pass.

Okay. I think if you, if you don't like, you know, having to be creative, come up with these clues or try to understand the clues and have that be in front of other people. I think if that pressure feels not fun to you, or if it gets in the way of your fun, then I think this isn't going to be for you. Right. And I agree. I had pretty much the same thing. I said, if you don't like being the one person who is responsible for guiding

your team. And I feel like that stress is even more exposed in Codenames because of the number of things that you have to track and it's competitive. So if you don't like the pressure of being the one person responsible for the success of your team, then at the very least don't be spymaster. But you may not like Codenames. I agree with you both. Okay. So did this game replace a previous one for you? I stopped playing Dixit after

I started playing Codenames. Yeah. I thought that might be your answer. Megan? No, there was not a game that I was pulling out regularly that now I don't. So this did not replace anything for me. Okay. For me, it was Pictionary. So the idea of having one of these games where you just rolled and moved along the board and did the art thing. Part of it was just set up of that. We happen to have friends that have like two easels that they would

set up for these Pictionary things. And then it devolved into playing off of the other team's board, trying to intercept and Codenames made it everything a lot more friendly. And it also had an easier out than waiting for one team to work all the way around the board. Has it since been replaced by something? And if so, by what? Megan? I mean, Decrypto. I think, you know, I will say that I think this is specific to our group. And our group, I

think Codenames has been replaced by Decrypto. I think, you know, when I think about the party scenarios that you've been discussing, Todd, I don't think Decrypto is replacing Codenames in those situations. So I do think there are settings in which it's not a great replacement. But in our group, in my heart, Decrypto has replaced Codenames. Is that what you wanted to say, Paul? I really dislike Decrypto. Oh, I just played, I just played

to get along with everybody else. For me, Codenames Duet replaced Codenames. Dropping bombs on the pod. No, I don't like Decrypto. I don't know what it is about it. But it's not for me. All right. So what replaced it? Or if anything? Duet. Duet. Okay. So Megan, I had the same answer. And I think for the same reason, I didn't, I didn't stop to think of it that way. But I think you're right. At least within our group, Decrypto has replaced

Codenames. But who knows? The Duet version of Codenames pictures may end up trumping everything else. I think in the party environment, just one has taken over in the games that like my wife will want to take to her friends houses and introduce them to. All right, soundtrack. What music would you want to listen to while playing this game? Paul? I went, well, first let me preface that with the classic spy music genre, popularized by James Bond movies is

great. However, I personally prefer the modern Japanese take on it. And I would recommend starting with the spy family soundtrack. Okay. I'm not familiar with the spy family. If you spell it out, it's spy X family, but you don't pronounce the X. It's a manga, anime. It has a really great soundtrack. Okay. Okay. We've learned something. For me, I was much more broad in that to me, I just think the most important thing is that you're listening to

something instrumental. I think it's much too easy if you're, you're listening to anything with lyrics for them that to impact your gameplay. Oh, because, Hey, Oh, I just listened to the song that mentioned this word and that's one of the words here in our grid. And now I can do Adele because hello is on there and she was just singing hello in the background and you're going to get that immediately. You know? Um, so I think that's why an instrumental

is the safest bet here. Okay. On the last episode of the podcast, I mentioned melodice.org having playlists for games. So I hit it over there and I checked out their playlist for code names and it's really good. And it has instrumental music, but it's like theme music from evil genius or get smart or the pink panther. And I'm thinking, I'm sampling each of those. I'm going, Oh yeah, this would be great. I would add to it like the Peter gun

theme. Paul, I agree. Like whatever the spy music is for that genre, definitely I would put it in there, but not quite as groovy or with lyrics, the way that the Austin powers music is that I would normally listen to for mind management. Good point. Rating on BGG scale of one to 10, no decimals. How would you rate these games? And if you want to drop different ratings for versions, go ahead. Megan, I give it a seven. I like this game.

I think it's a solid game. I think it's well constructed. I enjoy playing it. However, it doesn't hit the table super often for me. And I'm also okay with that. All right. I rate pictures a six code names, a seven and code names to wet a nine. Wow. Okay. It's a leap there seven to nine. And especially for Paul, he is one of our more strict graders or Raiders. I try to keep a bell curve. Yes. So that's saying something. And I will go

against that rating. And I had the original game down as a seven like Megan, but I had pictures down as an eight and I will hold duet back until I have a chance to explore it more. It's still a great game and I enjoy playing it and looking forward to trying out pictures and play it in duet style, which means for me it is a replayable game. And

I could see myself wanting to play this every couple of months. I mean, it's not something that I would want to play in person all that often, but I was playing that app every day. So the concept was pretty good. How about you two? How do you feel code names rates as far as being replayable and frequency? I totally agree with you, Todd. I was playing it nonstop on the app for a couple months, but I guess I burnt out on it. It was the

original code names. As far as duet goes, I play whenever I'm in a party game mood, which I'd say is about once a month, to be honest. Okay. Like the two of you, I played a lot on that app and then I burned out. So I'm curious, you know, once that app fully has its launch, if we'll get back into it or what features might roll out as part of that. But for me, for the physical game, you know, I'm fine with seeing this come out every

once in a while at a party or a holiday. But other than that, it's not something if I walked in to where we regularly have game night and it was set up and we were going to play it as a quick filler before we started something, you know, while people were coming in, that would be fine. I wouldn't be like, ugh. But at the same time, I'm never, it's never going to be what I'm saying. Oh, pull that one off the shelf while we wait. Yeah. All right. Any final thoughts about code names?

I will say just to circle back to something that we talked about at the start of the episode, I still think it's really fascinating that this came from the person who designed Through the Ages and Mage Knight. And maybe I'm showing my ignorance here, but I'm so curious. Are there other board game designers that are showing this kind of breadth in their designs? I just really appreciate it. Don't forget Bunny Bunny Moose Moose, right? Yeah. I was going to bring that up. Yeah.

I just think this is cool. And I'm not aware of any other designers like Flora in that breadth. Yeah, I don't either. At least not that come immediately to mind. Maybe with a little research, I could, you know, we could come up with one or someone listening to the pod can ping us with an answer. But yeah, great statement, Megan. Thank you. So with that, we've contacted our final agent and we win. Good job, team. The assassin. Oh no.

So thank you both for being available today. I really enjoyed this conversation and I'm excited to actually bring this to the table. Maybe we really should do a night of party games, Paul. I'd love to. For our next episode, we'll be taking on the OG version of the number one game on BGG. Thank you both. Thanks, Todd. Thank you. Thank you for listening to Replayable. Support for our podcast comes from listeners like you. You can support us at patreon.com slash

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