16. Medium
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/242529/medium
Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Word game, guessing, separate rounds
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 0
Game length: <1 min per turn
First played: 2020
Experience: 10+ sessions with 3-10+ players
Medium is a party-style game composed of individual mini-turns. During a mini-turn, a player and the player to their left or whatever are partners. Each reveals a word card from their hand at the same time. Then, they must try to think of a related word and, after a countdown, announce it simultaneously. If they succeed, they score points. If they fail, they must use the incorrectly matching words to try to arrive at yet another word, though of course the original words are banned. There is one final attempt in a third round as well if the players again fail to match.
The above describes basically every single detail of Medium's gameplay. The dirty little secret about Medium is that it's
not much of a game at all
- rather, it's an activity, more akin to a drinking game than a hobby game. If not for the nice production of the box and the art on the back of the cards, it certainly would come off that way.
But yeah, it lacks game-i-ness. The rules are incredibly loose; because of its entirely open-ended nature, like Just One, you basically just play until you feel like it. The game is hardly calibrated any other way to ensure consistent experiences. And there's absolutely nothing stopping players from just saying "dog" every time, even if it doesn't relate to the words on the table, or (less game-breakingly) just defaulting to "thing!" or "person!" when it gets too difficult. The downtime scales poorly when you exceed four players. There's little enforcement of the rules, and the way the scoring works (you're awarded highest points for getting the guess right on the first try) is somewhat contrary to the most
fun
part of the game, which is when you somehow match on the third try (when you guys have gone from "corn" and "bread" to "dog" and "white" to "dalmatian" and "fur" to somehow matching on "Cruella" or something). Also, picking the same two cards leads to the same answers, so your replayability can be limited by the deck and people's choices.
The upside of Medium is pretty clear though - it's a fun sort of spectacle that matches the vibes of non-gamers. There is one final game above Medium that similarly lacks game-i-ness. But since the pandemic has started, a lot of my IRL gaming has gone down without actual hobby gamers. So we take out activities like Medium, and we just sit around watching players shout at each other as we drink and eat cheese and crackers, and we add clarifying rules or challenges or let other people jump in if they want, and we don't keep score. And you know what? It's a great time!
yet all azuarc of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness