DOS

Recently, the subject of games that are like “Uno” but better has come up fairly regularly. So, imagine my, to be honest, rather tepid excitement when I discovered that there was a game called “DOS” that is, in fact, marketed as the sequel to “Uno.”

Therefore game 2# of the “Now & Then Summer Marathon 2024” is “DOS” by Mattel.

Before I start the review, it is worth noting that there are two versions of this game. If you do decide to grab this, it is definitely better to get the second edition, which comes with most of the action cards you would expect in a game of “Uno.” The first edition, which isn’t what I’m looking at here, only has a wild card and doesn’t come with all of the usual “take that” action cards you would expect in a game of “Uno.” Oddly the Second version that we are looking at here doesn’t not include this wild card in terms of making up numbers but does include a 2 that can be used as a wildcard..

My totally off-topic list of alternative names for “DOS: Second Edition”:

• Uno Dos
• Uno 2
• Uno: The Next Draw
• Uno Duo
• Uno Dual
• Uno: Double Trouble
• 2no
• Tuno

Now that I have that out of my system (I totally added to that list while I was writing the next bit), the game involves shuffling the cards as you would in a normal game of “Uno.” Instead of having one discard pile, you have two.

On your turn, you play “DOS” exactly as you normally would, but instead of being able to play to one pile, you can play to either pile. Alternatively, if you have a card in your hand that can play to both piles, you can play to both, therefore getting rid of your cards quicker.

Unlike normal “Uno,” you can’t match colour; you can only match numbers. However, you can connect the same colour cards together to match the number of the card in one of the discard piles. While the cards you combine must be the same colour, they don’t have to match the colour of the cards in the discard pile; they just have to match the number.

It’s different enough that I quite enjoyed it and it definitely involves slightly more thought than a game of regular “Uno.” There are also some basic maths skills here from an educational point of view.

I know I’ve already mentioned it, but I really cannot stress enough how important it is to get the second edition, not the first edition, as the first edition has really poor reviews based on the fact that it is missing most of the cards that make a game of “Uno.”

Production values are normal “Uno” fare with the cards in a shelf-hanging box, which I find particularly weird as generally whenever you see these on a supermarket shelf, they always come in the presentation box. I am always unsure whether to carefully remove that top part or not, but in this case, we’re leaving it well alone.

While I am not saying this is going to win any awards, and there are plenty of games out there that are like “Uno” but better, and subsequently also better than “DOS,” but as you can currently pick this up for about the same price as a bag of prawns at Tesco, there are definitely worse games.

This has led me down a bit of a rabbit hole of other versions of Uno that you are definitely going to see before the end of this Summer’s marathon.