CDSK: How Well Do You Know...?

A trivia game that’s all about choosing your own comfort level with each topic. How well do you think you know vegetables, Harry Potter, or magazines?

Published by Randolph, CDSK is a trivia board game based on player choice, designed for 2-16 players, with a playtime of 20-45 minutes.

Gameplay

Players divide into 2-4 teams of 1-4 players each. Each team chooses a player token from around the house and places it on the classic start location of the board, or the express start if they want a shorter game.

There are four categories of cards. 'Curious' includes precise or bizarre subjects, 'delightful' is entertainment, 'seasoned' is general and everyday life, and 'knowledge' includes topics such as science or history.

On your team’s turn, a player from another team draws a category card based on the space on the board on which your team’s token is and reads out the subject (for example Christmas Movies is one card from the delightful category). Your team is then supposed to quickly decide on a scale of 1-10 how well they know that subject and announce the number they choose. There are ten questions written on the card in increasing difficulty, and the player holding the card will read out the question that corresponds with the number your team chose. If you correctly answer the question, then you move your player token forward equal to the number you selected. You stay where you are if you answer incorrectly. It is now the next team’s turn.

There are also challenge spaces on the board. When your team is on one of these, a challenge card is drawn for you. These typically work a little differently — for example, they might have a list of true or false statements, and you move forward one space for each one you correctly identify as true or false.

When your team reaches the final space on the board, you must answer a 'hurry up and win' question. If you get the question wrong, you stay on the space and will try another one next turn. The first team to reach the final space on the board and correctly answer a hurry up and win question wins the game.

Review

CDSK is a very accessible trivia game. Even on the topics you know absolutely nothing about, the first or second questions on the cards are easy enough that you are almost always going to be able to get them, assuming you play it safe. But it’s fun to have that push-your-luck element of being able to go for the harder questions. You can even add in a little strategy here: if you find one of the categories a little easier than the others, your team can try to go for the number that will get them to that category next turn.

The subjects chosen for the game tend to be quite fun: there was even one card about modern board games. Also, since each card has 10 questions on it, even if you do come across a card you’ve already had in a previous game, you can just go with a different number than you previously, which helps with replayability. The challenge cards add a nice mix to things, although we did find the hurry up and win cards to be quite difficult, to the point that we were pretty much just guessing until we happened to get lucky.

Everything fits inside the box, with the cover folding out to reveal the board and the cards being nicely divided into slots by category. This compactness makes it a game that would be easy to pull out away from home, if it weren’t for the fact that the player tokens are not included with the game. The rulebook presents this as a way for players and teams to choose a token around them that represents them, and you can do something fun with this, but you can also be stuck at a restaurant or someplace where there’s nothing conveniently at hand to use for tokens.

It's a nice touch that there is no negative for getting a card wrong, and this makes the game feel like an accessible, friendly trivia game. The trivia categories were enjoyable and it’s fun to decide how well you think you know a topic. If you enjoy trivia games, CDSK is a solid entry in the series.

Pros: Fun subjects chosen, ability to choose the difficulty level of questions

Cons: No player tokens included, you can be stuck on the final question cards for a while

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