OBJECTIVE OF JUST ONE: Players work together to help the active player among them in guessing the correct word chosen from the clues they give which earns everyone a point per round.
NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 3 to 7 Players
COMPONENTS: 7 easels, 7 dry erase felt markers, 110 cards, and a rulebook.
TYPE OF GAME: Cooperative Party Card Game
AUDIENCE: Ages 8 and Up
OVERVIEW OF JUST ONE
A fun cooperative party game that challenges your knowledge of English. You definitely need your thinking cap on for this game. Players have to work together on this one to win points for everybody.
SETUP
The deck of cards is shuffled and 13 cards are randomly chosen to create a face-down pile in the middle of the play area. The remaining cards are returned to the game box as they shall not be used.
All players are given an easel and a dry erase marker.
A first player is randomly chosen and the game is to ready to be played
GAMEPLAY
The randomly chosen first player becomes the active player.
The active player picks up the top card on the face-down pile and places it on his easel without looking at it. The easel has a slot to accommodate the card and keep it from falling. The card should be clearly visible to the other players.
The words written on the card are numbered 1 to 5 and the active player is expected to choose any one of such numbers and tell the player what number he has chosen. This helps the other players know what word they are to provide clues for.
If the chosen word is unfamiliar to the players, they inform the active player so he can pick another number.
If the chosen number is acceptable, the other players proceed to write a clue on their own easel. They must not communicate with each other or suggest words to one another. They must also not show each other their words yet. The clue each player gives must comprise of just ONE word. Originality and variety are important here. Most people will just write common words which come to mind and these easily get canceled out.
When every player has written their clue, the active player is asked to close their eyes. The other players then reveal their clue words to each other and compare them. Clues must be valid to be accepted. Valid clues can be numbers, special characters, an acronym or onomatopoeia
If the same words have been written by two or more players, that clue is cancelled out simply by placing the easel face down to hide the word.
Where words are invalid, same action is taken. Invalid words are words that mean the same thing in a foreign language, a word that belongs to the same family as the chosen mystery word for example a player cannot write “princess” if the word being looked for is “prince”, an invented word, a word that sounds like the mystery word even if spelt differently for example “where” and “were”.
After comparison and cancellations where necessary, the remaining words are then shown to the active player who then tries to guess what the mystery word is with help of the remaining clues. They are allowed ONLY ONE GUESS.
A Three Player Variant
When there happens to be only three players, a slight change comes to play.
Each player is given two easels to write on instead of one which means that each player provides two different clues, one on each easel.
Every other step follows the same rules as in standard play.
SCORING
If the mystery word is correctly guessed, a point is won by all, and the card is placed face-up next to the remaining 12-card deck. Every face-up card accounts for a point.
If the active player guesses wrongly, no point is won and both the card in play and the top card of the active deck are put back into the game box.
The active player may also choose to skip guessing the mystery word if they feel the clues left are not helpful enough. When this happens, the card in play is returned to the game box and the next player to the left becomes the active player.
In the rare case of all the clues being canceled as a result of some words being identical and others invalid, or where all are identical or invalid (oh dear!) the card bearing the mystery word is placed in the game box and the next player takes his turn.
END OF GAME
The game ends once the 13 chosen cards are used up whether correctly guessed or not. The target is to win all 13 points but it doesn’t always happen.
