JinxO
- Board's Eye View
- Sep 16
- 2 min read
JinxO is a very accessible family-friendly party game for 4-7 players. It's designed by Martin Ang and it's published by Tabletoys.
The game comes with a large batch of topic cards offering 400 different topics; for example, 'places that are always cold', 'greatest board games of all time', and, more esoterically, 'DC superheroes who would do great at stand-up comedy'. For each of the three topics chosen for the round, players all write three answers on their individual dry-wipe boards. The answers must be just one or two words. The boards all have nine squares for your nine answers and you decide which square to write each answer in, just so long as you fill all nine squares with your nine answers.
Players then take turns reading out an answer on their board. If any other players have written the same thing anywhere on their board, those answers are circled and will score a point. If just one player has written the same answer, that player and the active player will both score two points. If no-one has a match for an answer you read out, you just mark that answer with a cross - it will score nothing. When a player has run out of answers to mark, the round immediately ends.
In addition to their scores for matches, players will score bonuses for lines or rows where all their words had at least one match. It's this element that makes it relevant where you've chosen to write your answers; you'll want to put what you think are likely to be sure-fire matches in the same row or column so you pick up the bonus.
This all makes for a simple, easy-to-play competitive party game that's an antidote to the ever-popular cooperative Just One (Repos Production). Whereas in Just One you need to avoid coming up with the same word as another player, in JinxO you are hoping to find a match.
