Will You Hit the Mark With Your Guesses in Hit List?

How many carnival snacks can you name? Shout out as many as you can think of and hope to complete the hit list!

Published by Gamewright, Hit List is a fifteen-minute party game for four or more players.

Gameplay

Players divide into two teams. The ten score tokens are placed face-down in the center of the table. These can have a range of values from one to four.

On your team’s turn, one player is selected to be the reader. The reader draws a card and announces the category on the card, then the thirty-second timer is started. The other players on the reader’s team shout out as many things that fit into that category as they can think of. Examples of categories are ’cartoon cats’ or ‘animals with horns’.

Each card contains six items written on it that fit inside its category. There is no penalty for incorrect answers, but for each answer players shout out that appears on the card, the reader takes one score token. Each card also has one of its six answers written in pink. This is a particularly obscure answer that, if the team guesses, allows the reader to take two score tokens.

Play continues until all the answers have been guessed or the timer runs out. If the timer runs out and there is still an answer un-guessed on the card, the other team gets to make one guess. If they are correct, they also get to take one score token (or two if they guess the pink answer). Both teams then add up the values of any score tokens they collected this turn and add it to their total points. The tokens are then reshuffled and returned, face-down, to the center of the table for the other team’s turn. You continue playing until all players on both teams have been the reader twice.

Review

Hit List is one in a series of really light, portable party games from Gamewright. It’s got a simple, accessible concept that is still quite fun — it’s enjoyable to rack your brain for possible answers and shout them out for each category.

Gameplay is fast, with turns only lasting thirty seconds, and even when it’s not your team’s turn you’re still engaged and paying attention, as there’s a chance to steal a point at the end.

The game does suggest that if you have an odd number of players, one person should simply take on the role of the reader and be neutral. However, while there would be a slight advantage if one team had an additional player, this seems preferable to the suggested rule since guessing is just part of the fun of the game. The unpredictability of which score tokens you’ll draw would also help to keep the game unpredictable regardless of one team being short a player. At the end of the day, the core goal of party games is just to give everyone a really good time.

There are a couple of other similar games from Gamewright, such as That’s It!, and unless you play a lot of party games, it might not be strictly necessary to own both. But like That’s It!, Hit List is a fun, inexpensive little game that plays well with a wide audience and is quite easy to teach to people who don’t play a lot of games.

Pros: Very accessible, portable, good for groups with little game experience

Cons: Somewhat similar to another Gamewright game, official rules do not handle odd number of players well

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.