Matthew BaileyToday’s game is “Jinx” (the one by Worgan Games, as there are quite a few games called Jinx out there), which combines Uno with a reaction-time element and a few powers thrown in.
The idea is that players put down cards from their hand as quickly as possible, starting with 1 and then 2, 3, etc. up to a 10 card. They have to say the number as they place the card. When they get to 10 they start again. There are reverse cards that start the count going downwards instead. In this mode, when they get to 1 it goes back to 10. Unlike Uno though, everyone plays at the same time and you are racing to play your cards. You have a large deck that is quite unwieldy and you are not allowed to spend time at the start organising it. Instead, the game starts and you pick up as many cards from your deck as possible into your hand and play from there. Don’t have the card you need? Then you can either wait for it to roll around again or pick up more cards, but the more cards you end up with the harder it is to find the ones you want. You can rearrange them on the fly but generally I found this slows you down too much.
There are a number of power cards such as moving up in odds or evens, or going in reverse. They don’t make too much difference to be honest, but they are nice to have to keep things rolling. If two players say a number at the same time they shout “Jinx” and both have to pick up that number of cards equally. If a player says the wrong number or places the wrong card, it’s the same penalty. This genuinely works well but with kids there can be an element of “who said it first?” or “did they say it at the same time?”, which can bog things down if you try and follow the rules to the letter.
It’s super simple and easy and everyone is going to be able to understand how to play this. As always with anything reaction-based, older kids are probably going to win more often and you need to be able to quickly pick up and manage a hand of cards, so I’d say this is for later single-digit kids and up purely because of the speed and dexterity required to make this work.
Overall it’s a bit of fun and a nice spin on the Uno formula. This isn’t something you need to rush out and buy and, to be honest, you could probably play this with a deck or two of Uno or normal playing cards, but for what it is it’s pretty good fun.
