Kulkmann's G@mebox - www.boardgame.de

Trapwords

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Author:
Jan Brezina

Publisher:
Czech Games Edition


2018

No. of Players:
4 - 8

EVALUATION

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G@mebox publisher Frank Schulte-Kulkmann writes about the game:

Have you ever fought your way through a dungeon by answering riddles? Well, if not you will now have a chance to do so in the new CGE game designed by Regis Torres and David Jablonovsky, but you will have to beware of the Trapwords!

Yes, you have read correctly - welcome to the world's first riddle dungeon crawler! Trapwords actually is a team game for four players or more, and the two teams of players have to compete to be the first the get their group of adventurers into the deep dungeon where the mighty dungeon keeper is waiting for the final battle. The way doesn't seem to be long - after all it's only 5 rooms which the team figures have to cross, but nonetheless the players have to use all their wits to get their first, lest they will be beaten by the other team.

So, how does the riddle contest work? During a round of play, one player in a team will be the cluegiver. That player is presented a word, and he will have a limited amount of time to describe this word to his fellow group members. If they are successful in finding the word, the group's team token will move forwards and will enter the next room of the dungeon?

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Sounds like some kind of cheap Dungeon Taboo? Well, that's a wide miss, because the rules of Trapwords offer a range of specialties which give the whole riddling procedure a distinctly different approach. So, the cluegiver is not given a list of words which he may not use for describing the word his team members have to riddle, but instead the players of the other group will write down a list of Trapwords before the riddling begins. The cluegiver doesn't know these Trapwords, but the riddling round will still be lost if he uses one of these words?

This may sound weid, but the concept is easy and intriguing at the same time. Let's imagine the cluegiver would have to describe "bee". What would be easier than saying "a yellow-black insect which produces honey"? However, here the slyness of the team putting up the Trapwords will be put to a challenge, because they might anticipate that words like "yellow", "black" or "honey" may be used to by the cluegiver, and so they might consider putting these words onto the list. But one again, these words might be too easily avoided, and so the trappers might put another choice of words onto the list, guessing that the easier words will be avoided by the cluegiver anyhow.

So the general concept of Trapwords is easy enough, and the mechanism of multiple-layered guessing alone would put up an entertaining riddling game. However, Trapwords is a dungeon crawler after all, and so the players will have to observe some extra rules. the deeper their team gets into the dungeon, the more words can be put onto the list of Trapwords by the opposing team, so that it will become increasingly harder for the cluegiver to describe the keyword. In addition, the players shouldn't forget that they are in a dungeon, and so they may have to face a nasty curse of they are the first group to enter a new room. During setup two random Curse cards have been placed next to the rooms, and whenever a team figure enter a room with a Curse card, that curse card will be revealed and applied to the next riddling round of that team. The Curse cards put a variety of complications on the team's cluegiver, usually be restricting his way of speech in one way or another (speaking in echoes, taking one breath only etc.). Furthermore, the dungeon lord also has a special power, and like the curses this power also will have an impact on the speaking capacities of the cluegiver.

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Quite nice is the fact that the game includes two different types of keywords. type are normal words, whereas others are fantasy-related, so that the dungeoneer feeling is enhanced this way. Furthermore, the game scales quite well, because groups with keen minds can be challenged with rooms allowing even more keywords or tougher dungeon keepers.

In summary, Trapwords is a really charming riddling game, combining a very tricky new riddling mechanism with a tiny bit of an adventure feeling. The game comes to full bloom if the players know each other at least a little bit, because this knowledge will make the whole task of putting up Trapwords even more enjoyable. If you like riddling games - go for this one!!!


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