So maybe you like word-guessing games like Catch Phrase, Taboo, or Codenames, but you feel as if the genre could use a little more… oh, what’s the word… subversiveness?
Welcome to When I Dream. This word-guessing party game flips the script in so many ways. For starters, instead of one player giving clues to a group, it’s the other way around; one person is blindfolded and everyone else takes turn giving them one-word clues to try and get them to guess as many words as possible during their dream.
Only, there’s a catch. Remember that subversiveness I mentioned above? The clue-givers are dealt secret roles at the start of each round. Some are fairies, some are boogeymen, and some are Sandmen. The fairies want the dreamer to get the words right. Boogeymen want them to get it wrong. As for Sandmen? A 50-50 split is best for them. The dreamer scores points along with the fairies.
What a wild ride. As the dreamer, you can’t even see faces, so you can’t read anyone very well. You have to try and sort out the bad clues and remember who has been less than helpful in previous words. The roles change very round, so you can’t be certain that Stacey is a boogeyman again. You only get one guess per word.
I also found it pretty challenging and interesting to be a boogeyman – you want to be confusing and give bad clues, but not so bad that the dreamer ignores you completely. It also helps if you can give clues that are similar to the good clues, but lead the dreamer just off the path to a related but incorrect answer.
This has a lot less pressure than many hidden-role games (unless you’re the dreamer, then you’re under a LOT of pressure), and roles change frequently. I thought it was a really neat twist on an established genre and you might just be able to get non-gamers to play. Plus, you get this cool bed-shaped component that holds the cards, and tons and tons of nicely-illustrated words to play with.
