Matthew BaileyGame #19 of the “Now & Then Summer Marathon 2024” is “Good Face Bad Face,” played with Jack (9) and Toby (6).
This is going to be a bit of an unusual review in the sense that I really like this game, but unless you are very confident that your children are going to be able to play it, it probably isn’t going to be a strong recommendation.
I’d love to hear people’s thoughts in the comments about social deduction games and games where you have to try and read how the other player is going to play. Generally speaking, both boys struggled with these kinds of concepts.
I have played really complex games, especially with Jack, designed for adults, yet all of my kids really struggle with any kind of social deduction aspect.
Now, “Good Face Bad Face” isn’t strictly speaking a social deduction game, but it is a game where you are trying to trick your opponents and then second-guess them about what they intend to do. This ends up getting into a “do they know that I know that they know” kind of situation.
The game comes with a deck of cards, each depicting a “Good Face” or a “Bad Face.” You can play this game with two players, but I would definitely say you kind of need to play with ideally three to get the full effect. You set up the deck based on the number of players and then deal an equal number of cards to each player face down, with everyone secretly looking at their cards.
Each player then takes turns being the stack owner. What you are essentially going to do is pre-make this stack containing “Good Faces” and “Bad Faces” in the order that you choose. What you are trying to do is get your opponents to turn over the “Bad Faces” and for you to end up with the “Good Faces.”
On your turn, you pass this stack to the next player. The next player then chooses whether they want to take the top card from the stack or pass it to the next player. If someone decides to turn over a card, one of two things happens: if you turn over a “Good Face,” then you add this card to your party. You can then choose to turn over another card if you want to, or you can pass the stack on. If you have a “Bad Face” already in your party, then you return one “Bad Face” to your hand along with the “Good Face” you drew and again turn over another card or pass the stack on. This adds a push-your-luck element, but the key difference is that it’s not actually luck; you’re trying to work out what order the person who made the stack decided to put the cards in based on what they thought you were going to do. If you end up with “Bad Face” cards, they essentially make you return all “Good Face” cards back to your hand and start to fill up your party, making it harder to get new “Good Face” cards.
Now, the interesting part is that when the stack returns to the person who created it, they must turn over the top card, meaning that when you make the stack, you’re trying to guess what your opponents are going to do while trying to end up with the stack getting back to you with the right card on top.
This continues until one player gets four “Good Face” cards and wins the game.
The strategy and tactics here, from a psychological point of view, are mind-blowingly interesting for me. I have played this with adults and I absolutely adore this game, but it is worth noting that it does seem to cause a bit of a polar reaction, with some people really liking it and some people really not liking it. Jack wasn’t that keen, and Toby never really got what he was supposed to do, as the concept of him trying to predict and socially engineer the stack was a bit much for him. This actually surprised me as he’s very capable, but I think these kinds of thought processes are quite tricky for younger children, and he was clearly getting frustrated, so I didn’t push it too hard.
This is a really difficult one for me, as I absolutely adore “Good Face Bad Face” and think it is a brilliant push-your-luck social deduction card game that could be a massive hit with casual gamers all the way up to pretty heavyweight gamers. I am, however, going to give a caution rather than a straight recommendation. To actually play this properly, there is a higher level of thinking needed that my kids really struggled with, and considering my kids are generally very competent playing most types of board games, this really surprised me with how difficult they found what on the surface seems like a fairly simple card game.
I don’t want to spoil it as it’s meant to be a surprise, but there is also a mini-expansion inside the game itself that the game instructions tell you to open after three plays. This adds some cool extra cards to the game, but I don’t really want to say too much about them so as not to ruin the surprise.
The game also comes with a branded elastic band to hold the cards together which si super cool.
If, however, you think your kids can get it, or you just want to get it to have a good game to play with adults, then this is a strong recommendation with a reasonable-sized caveat.
Disclaimer: A copy of “Good Face Bad Face” was kindly provided by “Big Potato Games” for the purpose of this review. All of our thoughts and opinions are our own, and the retail price has been taken into account when making my recommendation.
