Linkto Food: A Yummy Cooperative Trivia Game

Match the clue cards to the word cards. If your matches are correct, the last word card left will be the correct answer for the round!

Published by Hachette Boardgames USA and Randolph, Linkto Food is a cooperative trivia game themed around food trivia, with five levels of increasing difficulty.

Gameplay

There are 50 word cards, which each show a different type of food. You spread these out, face-up, on the table. There are also 49 clue cards. Each clue card shows five clues for different foods, and the clues will be of increasing difficulty. At the start of the game, players choose which difficulty they will be playing (the rulebook recommends you play the levels in order).

Each turn, a clue card is drawn and the clue at the difficulty level players have selected is read aloud. Players discuss which word card they believe the clue relates to and place the clue card on top of it. If you don’t know what word card it goes with, you can set it aside and return to it later. At any time, players may move clue cards around between different word cards.

Once you have placed all the clue cards, you will be left with one word card left. You then take the answer card and check the code on the back that relates to your selected difficulty level, with the code on the back of the remaining word card. If the two match, you win. If they do not match, you have a second chance to go through the clue cards again and try moving them around. On your second try, if your final word card does not match the code on the answer card, you may compare the codes on the back of each clue card with the codes on the back of the word cards they are on, only keeping the ones together that match. You then go through and try to correctly place the clue cards again, and have one final chance to find the correct word card whose code will match with the code on the answer card.

The rulebook says that points are not important to the game but does include a point system if you choose to play it, based on the number of tries it took you to match the correct word card with the answer card, and the number of correct pairs you have with clue and word cards.

Review

Linko Food is a fun mix of trivia and logic. You're tapping into the trivia knowledge of all the players around the table, knocking out the easy clues that you know right away, and then trying to use logic on the more difficult ones, slowly whittling down your options. It’s satisfying when you loop back to a question you had no idea about the first time around, and suddenly see which word card it must be now that you only have a handful left.

There is a nice escalation of difficulty as you progress through the game levels. The first level is definitely quite easy, but there were still a handful of clues we had to come back to a couple of times, and the later levels have some quite challenging clues.

The code system for checking your answers is cleverly designed and makes it quite easy to check your final clue card against the answer card. The biggest flaw of the game, however, is the limited number of plays. You really can only play through the game five times, and especially the early difficulty levels play pretty quickly. You can certainly pass this game on to others, but it still ends up feeling a little unsatisfying as we definitely wanted more.

It’s fun to be able to discuss trivia questions with everyone at the table, which does make Linkto Food a solid party game, and compatible with a wide range of player counts. Overall, we quite enjoyed Linkto Food, we just wish there was more of it. Fortunately, there is another Linkto game available, Linkto Travel, and presumably more themes in the works.

Pros: A fun cooperative take on the trivia genre, code system is well designed

Cons: Not enough rounds of gameplay

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