Concept

Concept? What kind of a game’s that? Concept?
A concept’s a thought – an idea – a meaning.
So?

Well, in Concept, there are two sets of players on each turn. One set of players has been given access to a ‘target’, and it’s their job to try to provide the others with a chance of finding out what that target is, by revealing the concepts that underlie it.

How“, I hear you ask.
Well, they use the bright icons on the games board to highlight pertinent concepts – concepts that may help to work out what the target is. There are concept-icons for gender, animals, colours, oldness, buildings …. and so on.
For example, they may be working with the target milk.

With milk in mind, they might indicate (by putting down a large green question mark) that the core, main concept is liquid. The guessers may immediately start …. “water” …. “wine” … and so on. Here’s where a bit of extra pressure builds for the concept-givers, since they need to confirm if any submissions (generally in the form of shouts) are in some degree approaching the concept – they might say no to “water”, and no to “wine”.

After the liquid icon, the concept-givers might then put a second marker on the icon for the colour white, followed quickly by another one on the food concept-icon.

There it is – simple: a liquid that is white and is food. Now that’s hardly going to be a house-brick, is it?
It’s likely that a guesser or two will conclude that it’s milk: be fair, it’s possible. Watch it happening here.

If six were playing, there would be two ‘givers’ in each turn, and four ‘guessers’. The givers choose which target they’ll use, having drawn a card at random, with a range of choices on it: easy, hard, or fiendish (the designers nicely use the word ‘challenging’).

From then on, it may become a little frenzied, as guessers may start to shout out their guesses from the moment the first concept clue is revealed. And they can submit as many guesses as they want.
And every time that an additional piece of information is revealed, they can shout new ones!

Whoever gets the right answer, thereby lighting up our lives, scores two lightbulbs, and each of the ‘givers’ gets one lightbulb. The game goes on until someone gathers a dozen bulbs – or until the throats are simply too, too dry. Then you move on to a drinking game 🙂

For families or groups that enjoy fun games, give some thought to Concept! There are no rules about good behaviour or waiting your turn, so you just might have to put up with people shouting out silly things – “one more like that, and you’re going to bed grandma!”

It may leave your head reeling.

  • the concept’s straightforward
  • the playing’s not so easy-peasy
  • minimal setting up
  • replayable
  • quick thinking
  • definitely for a ‘party’ spirit
  • there’s a kids version