Similo deduction game review

This time of year, it’s great to gather as family and friends for some light-hearted games.

Similo, by Horrible Guild, fits that very well.

That’s because Similo is a cooperative deduction game where everyone either wins or loses together. It comes in a variety of card sets of 30 cards such as Fables, Myths, Animals, History, and more. All of which have fantastic artwork that add to the enjoyment of the game.

The goal is to make the other players guess one secret character by playing other character cards from your hand as clues, stating whether they’re similar to or different from the secret character.

And because it’s nice and compact, it’s a great game to give as a gift as well.

How to play Similo

Similo is a very simple game to learn.

One player is chosen to be the Clue Giver and the rest are Guessers. The Clue Giver draws 1 card and secretly looks at it. This will be the Secret Character for the game.

The Clue Giver draws 11 more cards and shuffles in the Secret Character. They then randomly set out the cards face up in a 4×3 grid.

Next, the Clue Giver draws a hand of 5 cards.

The game is played over 5 rounds during which the Clue Giver gives the rest of the players a clue by playing a card from their hand. They can not speak or give any other signals of clues. The way they orient the card dictates what type of clue it is.

If the Clue Giver places the card vertically, that means the clue has something similar to the Secret Character.
If the Clue Giver places the card horizontally, that means the clue has something different from the Secret Character.

After placing the clue card, the Clue Giver draws a new card to their hand. So they will always have 5 cards in their hand to choose from.

The Guessers must now jointly decide which cards to remove from the grid.

In the first round, they must remove 1 card. If the Guessers remove the Secret Character from play, then all players lose the game. As long as the Secret Character is still in play, players move on to the next round.

In the second round, the Guessers must remove 2 cards. In the 3rd round, they must remove 3 cards. And in the 4th round, they must remove 4 cards. As long as they haven’t removed the Secret Character, they keep going. In the 5th and final round, there will just be 2 characters in play.

After the Clue Giver plays their 5th and final clue, the Guessers must remove 1 of the 2 cards. If the remaining card is the Secret Character, then everybody wins. They have successfully worked together to decipher the clues and find the Secret Character!

Can the whole family enjoy Similo?

Similo is a fantastic game for the whole family.

First of all, it’s a cooperative game – so everyone is working together to discover the secret character.

Second, reading isn’t required to play. The large text on each card is the character names. But if you’re playing with children, it’s simple enough to read that name out loud. There’s also small text on the side of the cards that players may want to read for further reference. But that’s just a cool addition for those that have interest.

Third, people of all ages and play – which makes it great to play with grandparents or grandkids as well. People of all ages love figuring out similarities and differences between different things. And that’s all there is to Similo.

Plus, we really like the artwork on all the cards. Both the style of the characters themselves as well as their backgrounds are fun to look at.

But the real crux of the game is figuring out what the Clue Giver is trying to tell the Guessers with each clue. Sure, they may place the card vertically, indicating there’s something similar between that clue character and the secret character, but you don’t quite know what element it is.

Are they going for the simple, male vs female? Or perhaps the almost as simple, hero vs villain? Or are they looking at the color background on the card? Or is it something more subtle like what food the characters like to eat?

And that’s the fun of the game! How well does your group think alike?

Because it’s such a quick game, we rarely play just one game of Similo. That’s because many people want a turn being the Clue Giver. And when we’re playing more than 1 game, we definitely like to move deeper than the simple style of clues. For example, we may say that for this game we won’t give the male/female or hero/villain or child/adult clues. But that’s also the beauty of the game. You can go with the flow however your group wants to.

We also like mixing the different sets.

We have Fables and History. But we’ve also played Wild Animals, Myths, and Harry Potter. And we’d love to try Lord of the Rings. The rules suggest when playing with multiple decks to use one set for the 12 character grid and one set for the clues. But we also enjoy shuffling the decks together for both the grid and clues and seeing what comes of it.

Either way you choose to play, Similo is a fun game.

How does Similo score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

As we just mentioned, we rarely just play a single game of Similo. Which means it scores super high on our “let’s play again” game meter.

With just 5 rounds, it’s a quick game to play. So playing multiple games back to back feels like the way it’s meant to be.

We’ll also warn you that you’ll want to get more than just one set. You may start out with just one. But before you know it, you’ll grab another set to add a bit of variety. Or just go for it and grab a few Similo games the first time.