A couple of years ago, I reviewed a little party game called Smug Owls from Runaway Parade Games. It has remained in my collection, and several family members often request to play it. So when I saw Bullseye from the same design duo of Mike Belsole and Grace Kendall, my interest was immediately piqued! The timing worked out for me to take it to visit family out of state, where we often play a lot of party and word games. How did it go over? I’ll share my thoughts below.
Bullseye is a cooperative word game for 3-8 players, placing it solidly in the party game genre. Playtime is 25+ minutes.
Gameplay Overview:
One player, the “archer”, will draw two single-word category cards from the deck and choose one. The person to the archer’s left will then secretly write a word that fits the chosen category on the back of the card and show it to all other players except the archer.
Each player then thinks of a clue to help the archer guess the secret word. For example, the category might be “Fruit” and the clue word is “Banana”, players might think of “yellow”, “monkey”, “peel”. But the catch is, each player will only write the first letter of the clue on their marker board. Once everyone has written their letter, they reveal their boards to the archer, who then may either make a guess at the secret word or pass.
If the archer passes, each player passes their marker board to the player on their left, and a new round begins. For the new round, the players must now try to intuit which clue word the previous player had begun to write. They will fill in the next letter space and reveal the boards again. The archer may continue to pass for up to five rounds of this, but with each pass, the points gained will diminish (for example, a correct answer on the first round is worth 20 points, second round is worth 10 points). If the archer guesses incorrectly, they “miss”, scoring no points, and the next player becomes the new archer.
Play continues until everyone has had the chance to be the archer once or twice (depending on player count).
At the end, players tally the score to see how well they did!
Game Experience:
Bullseye is a nuanced experience that I think will be hit or miss (ha!) for a lot of players. But with my family, it went over really well. Even my brother-in-law, who is not a big fan of word games, enjoyed it. The incremental gameplay of adding a single letter at a time takes a bit of adjusting to, but it does feel unique. As you play the game, you can sense a bit of that Just One DNA, but it by no means copies that game.
Sometimes guessing what another player started to write is tricky, and you just have to go with your own thoughts, which is half the fun, as you might end up with a completely different clue than originally intended. If a player is really stumped, they can just put an underscore, and in the next round, the player who gets that board may fill in two letters if they have an idea.
Where this game suffers is in the very open nature of the secret words. If you want to “game the system”, for many categories it’s easy to simply choose the most obvious answer, which then allows the archer to make a correct guess in the first round. This is where I think this game will shine best with creative players who can embrace the idea of thinking outside the box (this is the same sort of attribute I think Smug Owls has). By giving slightly interesting clues—not not impossible ones, since this is a co-op after all—players elevate the game to a more interesting experience.
Final Thoughts:
To the rigid play-to-win gamer, Bullseye might not be a great fit. It is a little quirky, which I like, and not everyone is going to find it meshes with them. But for an offbeat group ready to embrace something a little different, this one is something of a gem. We won’t find it hitting the success rate of giants like Just One and So Clover, but I believe it has a niche, and players who are intrigued after reading this review should definitely give it a try!
Final Score: 3 Stars – A quirky little niche party game that was a hit with my family!
Hits:
• Unique game experience
• Highly collaborative
Misses:
• It’s possible to game the system
• Narrow appeal
