Guessocracy
- Board's Eye View
- Nov 17, 2025
- 2 min read
Guessocracy, from Hobby Japan, is an estimation and memory party game for 3-6 players. It's a 'majority rules' game that notionally represents political opinion and popularity, and it's designed by Yoshihisa Itsubaki, with art (mainly on the box and cover cloth) by Akimi Kawakami.
The game is played using 14 six-sided dice of different sizes and colours. These are rolled in the box and then, after a count of three, covered with the supplied cloth. Each of the players then makes their best guess of the number that appears most frequently and the number that appears least frequently in the dice that have been rolled, and they indicate these on their large and small dials. Players earn a popularity point (victory point) if their guesstimates accord with the majority, and if there's a tie for the majority (for example, in a five-player game, two players guess 4 as the most and two guess 5) then the higher number takes priority. In guesstimates for the lowest number, ties go in favour of the lower number.
If you disagree with the majority, either over the most or fewest dice, or both, you can grab an Objection Stick and lodge an objection. It's only in the event of an objection that players get to remove the cloth and take another look at the dice that were actually rolled. Objections aren't without risk: you have to hazard 3 popularity merely to lodge the objection and you lose those points if your Objection was incorrect. If, however, it was correct, you win a popularity, the players who had voted for the incorrect majority return the popularity point they had been given for that majority, and any player with the correct number gains popularity points equal to the number of dice of the correct number.
Guessocracy may sound silly but it's a surprisingly fun filler - definitely best at higher player counts and played over a number of rounds equal to the number of players. On a glance of 2 or 3 seconds, players will have only an impression of the likely actual majority and minority numbers so there can be tactics involved in guessing which number is likely to be chosen by the most players. You ought to be pretty sure of yourself to grab an Objection Stick because the penalty for an incorrect Objection is high but you'll find players hazarding Objections for the sheer fun of the game - especially after a run of turns with no Objection and so where players never get to see which dice really were in the majority.
