Color Code: What Colors Do You Associate With Words?

What color springs to mind when you think of ice cream or dancing? What color do you predict your friends will think of?

Published by Chili Island Games, Color Code is a cooperative party game for 2-6 players with a 30-minute game time, that is all about words and the colors you associate with them.

Gameplay

Each round, someone takes on the role of color coder. He draws three word cards and places them in a row on the game board. He then chooses one of the eight different color cards for each word, choosing the color he feels best fits a word or that he associates with that word in some way. He then places each chosen card face-down in front of its respective word. The other players then discuss which colors they believe the color coder chose and place their color tiles to indicate their guesses. The player to the right of the color coder is the color master and he makes all final decisions should the players not be able to agree.

You then reveal the chosen colors. Each word card that players correctly guessed the color for is scored and the other word cards are discarded. It is now the next player’s turn to be the color coder.

The group also has three special tiles. The color coder may choose to spend one of these on his turn. One allows the color coder to select one of the words and its face-down color and to point at a different player, to indicate that the chosen color is somehow related to something that player will have a particular connection with. The color filter allows the color coder to reveal one color he did not use. The 50/50 allows the players to guess two colors for a particular word, increasing their odds of getting it right.

Finally, the guessers have three color tiles. When they feel particularly confident about a guess they have made, they can play a color tile with it, and the tile will be added to their score if they are correct (the tile is discarded if they are wrong).

The game ends once each player has been the color coder a certain number of times. You then calculate your score. For every two word cards you scored, you go up a level. The goal is to see how high you can reach as a team. If you manage to go past level 6, you reach the highest score!

There is also a variant in which players can add a new color to the game (pink, purple, or orange) when they successfully complete the first three levels.

Review

Color Code is a nice, straightforward party game with interesting ideas and concepts, that leads to fun conversations. It’s interesting to see why each player picks particular colors and how their thought process works. Striking that balance between what a word and color combination means to you and what the other players are likely to guess is an interesting challenge.

The text on the cards could be a little bigger, especially if you’re going to be playing with a larger group. The words are written so that you can read them from both directions, but there’s still a lot of white space on the cards that could have allowed for a larger font size.

Still, the words are quite well chosen. There’s not a lot here that are going to be easy choices for the players, with many colors being a good fit, even without taking into account personal experiences and situations that might further change the direction a player will gravitate towards. Words in combination can also make it more challenging if you have two that both lean towards the same color.

The rules surrounding the color master are generally unnecessary, but the rulebook does give special directions for playing with up to 18 players, where it would be necessary to have a player to make final decisions.

If you like quiet, thoughtful party games with interesting chats among the players, Color Code is a solid entry. It doesn’t bring anything hugely new to the genre, but what it does it does well.

Pro: Words are very well chosen, leads to fun conversation among the players

Cons: Words could be written in a larger font, color master rules are generally unnecessary

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