Game Spotlight – Anomia

Anomia from Anomia press LLC is one of those raucous party card games that are quite a lot of fun with a good gathering of people. I’d mention the other games Anomia Press offers but it looks like it’s 4 versions of Anomia and a game called Duple which looks like a reimaging of Anomia. 

Anomia, according to Merriam Webster, is: “an impairment of language marked by difficulty or inability in finding the proper word and especially the name of objects.” Which is pretty apt because Anomia is tasking you to quickly come up with a representative word from a random category flipped up on a card. That’s not as easy as you think, oh reader who is sitting there leisurely at home and not being put on the spot to remember ANY Shampoo Brand despite having only bought Head and Shoulders for the last 20 years.

Play starts with 2 draw piles (there are 2 decks of cards, a red backed deck and a blue backed deck. Use either deck and split it into 2 draw piles…although I don’t see why you can’t use a mega deck and combine both. It’ll just be a longer game that way).  The first player (who is the person who shuffled the cards…determine that how you will), flips a card up so that everyone can see what is on that face at the same time (more or less – basically don’t be a jerk and hide your card from the person you like the least MmmKay?).

There will be a word or words printed on the card so they can be read upright from the top or bottom of the card and a symbol; one of Purple Waves, Green Pluses, Brown Asterisks, Orange Circles, Yellow Diamonds, Blue Grids, Pink Equal Signs, or Red 4 Dots. Some cards are marked “Wild Card” and have 2 symbols.

Going clockwise, the next player flips a card up and compares it to the card(s) on the table. If a symbol on the newly drawn card matches a symbol on a card already in play, the owners of the cards enter a Face Off. Each player in the Face Off will try to come up with a representative word for the category specified on the other person’s card before that person can do likewise. Whoever shouts the word out first (and correctly) wins the other player’s card. The winner of the Face Off keeps their card in play while the loser now plays with the newly revealed card on their pile. This may trigger another Face Off and if it does, resolve that before continuing on.  If the losing person in a Face Off has no more cards in their play pile, they will have to wait for their next turn to draw a card from the draw pile. 

In case of a Face Off tie, a player not involved in the Face Off will flip up a random card from the draw pile and both Face Off players will try to answer from the tie breaker card (giving an answer for the same category this time). The tie breaker card is reshuffled into one of the draw piles and the original Face Off cards are resolved for the winner and loser.

When a Wild Card comes into play, it is placed in a general area between the draw piles and becomes a secondary Face Off trigger. So while you may not match any other players’ symbols, if you and another player match the 2 symbols on the wild card, then the two of you are now in a Face Off.

End game is triggered when the draw piles are depleted. The person with the most cards wins.

Things I liked: 

• I kind of like these fast paced chaos games and this one is pretty easy to learn and a lot of fun to play.  
• This deck is well designed for the color challenged. It doesn’t matter if you can’t distinguish the green of the plus from the blue of the grids, the difference between the plus and the grid is huge and not likely to cause any confusion. 
• There are a LOT of categories and while some cards seem a bit limited (Punctuation marks? There are maybe a good handful of those before you have exhausted your choices), most of them are broad categories like books, reptiles, astronauts, fruit… The direction also say you can choose to allow duplicate answers or not so if you are good for INTERROBANG for every instance of punctuation marks, play on.

Things I didn’t like: 

• This is another game where there is most likely going to be someone who is in their element with fast on the spot thinking and they are going to wind up with the majority of the cards.  Even if you blurt out “Draorappgralime” trying to get all the fruits you can in one word before that person can say “Neil Armstrong”. True story.

• The layout design of the Directions is weird. When you unfold them, the “title page” (as it were) leads right into the middle of the rules (somewhere after step 9). Unintuitively you have to flip the “front” or “title” page over for the set up and beginning.
• Let’s also talk about the directions themselves. They recommend (leading with an embolden IMPORTANT! – caps and exclamation point included) “Read the following directions out loud AS you begin to play.”  Yeah. Don’t do that. This is not a tranquil turn based game where you have time to build up your strategy between rounds. It’s also a fairly simple game and one read through is probably all it’s going to take to understand how to play.