Review: JUST ONE is a Fun Party Word Game Now Available at Walmart
Asmodee recently launched the party word game Just One to Walmart stores and they were kind enough to send me a copy to try out. Some quick background. The game comes from Repos Production and was created by Ludovic Roudy and Bruno Sautter. The gameplay is a little reminiscent of the popular game Taboo.
Everyone is working together as a team and at the start, 13 cards are pulled from the box to create the deck. One person draws a card and is trying to guess a word while everyone else is trying to help them get there. Each player gets to write one one-word clue on their little easel, any duplicates are eliminated, and the guesser then uses the remaining clues to guess their mystery word. If they guess correctly, the team gets a point. If they guess incorrectly, they don’t get a point and the next card is removed back into the box. You can pass if you really don’t have any clue in order to not lose out on any points.
The game is fun. It presents some interesting challenges as when you’re not the guesser, you have to come up with a clue that someone else won’t give, but it needs to be clear so that the guesser has a shot. As the guesser, you need to be able to figure out what the heck your teammates are thinking and how they could all connect. I had fun playing this game. The easels and markers are good quality, there are 110 cards with 5 words each for 550 possible words you could be guessing. That gives it quite a bit of replay value, especially since you only use 13 cards per game. Oh, and it’s a relatively quick game too. It’s rated at about 20 minutes and my 4-person group found that to be pretty accurate.
Just One is rated for 3-7 players. The 3-player variant has each player providing 2 clues which feels very easy. I also played in a 4-person group and it was very hard. If two people wrote the same clue, which happened somewhat frequently, then the guesser was left with one clue which sometimes feels impossible (skipping the guess was a very nice feature). I would definitely recommend having 5-7 people in your group to play Just One.
If you’re looking for a new party word game, give Just One a go. It’s not terribly expensive (roughly $20-25), it’s fast, and it’s fun. You can purchase it now from Walmart or even other stores like Target.
