Touch It: How Good Is Your Sense of Touch, Really?

Is that a blowfish or a seahorse you’re feeling on this card? Feel carefully but quickly, as being the first to guess your card will score you extra points, but only if you’re right.

Published by Wonderful World Board Games, Touch It is designed for 2-6 players and plays in 5-10 minutes.

Gameplay

The deck is shuffled and placed in the center of the table. The back of each card shows four things. The front of the card has a raised image of one of those four.

Every round, each player takes one card, being careful not to look at or touch the front of the card. On the count of three, players feel the front of their cards, trying to figure out by touch alone which of the four things shown on the card’s back is on the front. As soon as a player believes he has figured it out, he announces his guess and flips over his card. Once all but one player has guessed, the guessing ends.

The first player to correctly guess his card earns two points. All other correct guesses earn one point.  Players then start a new round. The first player to seven points wins the game.

Photo provided by the publisher

Marine Life

Touch It: Marine Life focuses on sea animals or other things you might find in the ocean. Each card has a little fact about that animal or object. Families might be interested in the educational bent of the game, and we did enjoy learning about a few new sea creatures, as well.

There is an odd choice, though, with one of the possible images being shown as a mermaid but it’s actually a dugong shown on the front of the card, with the description calling it a ‘real-world’ mermaid. A nice little joke and nod to the animal believed to inspire the mermaid legends…but we mostly felt disappointed that we were promised mermaids by the back of the cards, and they didn’t actually appear.

Dungeon

Touch It: Dungeon has a fantasy setting with objects players would find in a questing dungeon such as different types of monsters or magical items. We were impressed by the flavor text on the cards, with descriptions and stats of the monsters, and the abilities of the objects. It made the game feel like part of a bigger world and was an extra step that they didn’t need to take in the design of the game, but it was very much appreciated.

The artwork is very colorful and creative, and just looks a little more put-together than Marine Life’s design.

Overall

Touch It is a unique idea and feels new and different. It plays quite fast, and the feeling mechanic isn’t going to engage players for the whole evening, but it’s a fun filler to start game night with or to play over lunch. It could also be enjoyed while traveling and doesn’t take up much space.

It’s always fun when a game like this comes with different themes so you can pick the one that appeals to your group the most. The rules do include a couple of variants, but they feel mostly like afterthoughts and the core gameplay is the most enjoyable.

However, we did come across a small design flaw. Players tended to hold up a card while feeling the front, so that people could often see what object was on each other’s cards. If you happen to have a card that shows the exact same four things on its back as another player, you know that what is on the other player’s card isn’t going to be on yours. Consequently, players must be careful not reveal the front of their cards, not just to themselves but to everyone else as well.

We enjoyed Touch It. It was challenging, and it was a fun puzzle to try and figure out what you were feeling, while comparing it to the four images you were looking at on the back of the card. We preferred the Dungeon theme, but that’s going to depend on the group playing. This is a good fit for families and scales well across its player counts.

Pros: Different themes available, one of only a few games based on the sense of touch

Cons: Need to be careful not to show your card to other players

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