Show & Tile - Jellybean James
Game title: Show & Tile
Game description: Show & Tile is a party game for 3-6 players, suitable for all ages! Each player takes two sets of tangram tiles, picks a word, and starts building. At the end of 90 seconds, put your tiles down and try to guess everyone’s words! Can’t draw? No problem! Tangrams have been around for centuries, and can be used to construct anything you can imagine!
Overall
-
Play (Mechanics)
-
Presentation (Art/Quality)
-
Plan (Rules)
Summary
A great party game needs an obvious hook, minimal rules overhead, and memorable, laughable moments. Show & Tile easily checks off every one of those boxes. The hook: Pictionary, but with Tangrams.
Pros
Extremely quick learning time
As challenging as each player wants it to be
Allows for creative play
Cons
Potential to be frustrating for some players
Repeated words across cards may limit replayability
Full Show & Tile Review
A great party game needs an obvious hook, minimal rules overhead, and memorable, laughable moments. Show & Tile easily checks off every one of those boxes. The hook: Pictionary, but with Tangrams.
Learning the game is extremely intuitive for anyone who’s played any party game. The entire rules section of the single-fold rulebook fits within a single page – ideal for a party game! Each round, each player is dealt cards with a few different choices of a word they’ll have to craft. (Some words are worth an extra point if guessed, but are extra tricky.) After everyone’s chosen, the players have 90 seconds to simultaneously use their tiles – cardboard squares, trapezoids, and triangles of various sizes, double sided with different colors on each side – to craft some artwork, trying to make their word as guessable as possible.
After the 90 seconds is up – which is always barely enough time – everyone writes their best guess for each other player’s word. You don’t get any hints beyond their creation – it’s not multiple choice, no extra clues anywhere. Players get 2 points if anyone guesses their word, and 1 point for every correct guess they make. Play 5 rounds, and the highest score wins.
Players learning the game tend to flip-flop between it seeming very easy to seeming impossible. It doesn’t take long for players to feel the challenge of designing a picture with no curves and without even the benefit of enough squares for pixel art. But soon enough everyone figures out ways to use the shapes and their two colors to their benefit, picking their words strategically. Some players like to branch out into layering pieces on top of each other, using some pieces as arrows pointing to part of their picture, or even on rare occasion crafting their picture out of the negative space surrounded by tiles!
Show & Tile provides players ample opportunities to show off their impressive skills, and allows for moments of “That was supposed to be an elephant?!” and “How did you possibly get that was a robot?!” Its easy accessibility, quick playtime, and allowance for creativity mean it should be a go-to party game for the long run.
A copy of Show & Tile was provided for free by Jellybean Games.
Tim and Kayleigh Mierzejewski first met at a Battlestar Galactica board game night and visited GenCon on their honeymoon, so it’s safe to say they are big fans of games! Tim is one of the designers of Geek Fever Games, behind titles like Druid Dice, Plus Word, and Ice Fortress, and Kayleigh is his favorite playtester and co-developer. Together they enjoy games ranging from Taboo to Mage Knight, and have begun teaching their pre-school daughters to love games just as much as they do.
Buy me a Coffee
