Klink Card Game Review

Klink

WBG Score: 7

Player Count: 3-5

You’ll like this if you like: No thanks, 6 Nimmt, Cockroach Poker

Published by: Rebel Studio

Designed by: Darrell Cannon

This is a review copy. See our review policy here

By Steve Godfrey

Because I was having trouble coming up with my usual “hilarious” introductions for this game I decided to find out what Klink actually meant. So, instead of laughs, you get semantics. In Dutch it means a catch of wood or metal to fasten a door. In German (and Dutch) it means a maker of door fittings or a customs or border officer and it’s also slang for prison cell. Which is ironic because this game has no barrier to entry, is not somewhere to get locked up in nor is the box fastened with anything……it’s also not a Pokémon……there’s a Pokémon called Klink.

How to Klink

To set up, simply shuffle the number cards into a face down deck. Then shuffle the special ability cards and place three out face up and you're ready to go. On your turn take two cards from the deck and place them face down, unseen in front of you. Then look at one of the cards, at which point you have a decision to make. Either keep the cards, flipping them face up and adding them to your tableau or pass them to another player round the table. If you pass them on, that player then gets to look at one of those cards (it doesn’t matter which one) and then makes the same decision, although they can only pass the cards to a player that hasn't already had them this turn. When a player decides to keep the cards and flips them over they check for two effects. If you have two cards of the same number they flip face down. If you get a run of three numbers then you get to use one of the special ability cards which then gets discarded and replaced with a new one. Whoever keeps the cards then draws the top two cards and starts again. A round will end when one player has ten cards in front of them. The players will score what’s in front of them. Face down cards will score nothing and the player who has the most cards in front of them will minus ten points from their score. That sounds quite punishing until you realise that the person with the lowest score at the end of the game will win. If, at the end of a round a player has scored 77 points the game will end. 

It’s good to Klink

It’d be all too easy to look at this unassuming deck of number cards and wonder just how much strategy can you get from them. Well, it’s actually a decent amount. Rounds will start simply enough. You see a high value card, well, maybe you pass it on but with no real priority on who it goes to. Maybe the person opposite you because you’ve found out that they’ve been stealing one of each of your pairs of socks. As the game goes on and people start to get cards in front of them you can start playing more tactically. If you flip a card and you don’t want to take them it’s easy to see who you should and shouldn’t pass them to. The last thing you want is to give someone cards only for them to be able to flip cards or complete a run and use an ability card. There’s even times when it can get a bit semi co-operative as you pass cards to another player just hoping they look at the same card as you and realise why you passed to them rather than someone else. It’s this fun little back and forth of trying to get one over on your opponents by pushing those big cards onto them but at the same time it could all too easily backfire because you’ve only got half the information to go on. Sure you could be passing them a high card, but also that second card could be just the card they needed. It’s that fun little twist and element of partial push your luck and the unknown that brings the game to life. 

Is there a barrier?

The biggest sin in this game for me is the way it looks. It’s a deck of cards with numbers on and another with some special abilities on and no theme. Now that in itself isn’t a problem because there are many a great game that are just theme-less decks of numbered cards. Unfortunately the almost plain white box and the non descript name  doesn’t exactly draw people to it on the shelf. I’d brought this to a few game nights before we finally started playing it and people's attention were certainly turned to other more vibrant looking games. Unfortunately in board games you’re damned if you do and you're damned if you don’t. If you throw a theme onto a game that is essentially abstract you’ll find people complaining that it makes no sense and was pointless to put it on there. However, go in the opposite direction and you're sure to have people saying that it should have been made more appealing. I’m aware that I’m kinda doing the latter here but I’ll admit that this one has been in my review pile for longer than I usually like. I was taking it to game nights and people weren’t picking it out among the other boxes that were on offer. It was getting lost in the mix which was a shame because people enjoyed it when we did start getting it to the table. It’s all a fine balance to walk and I don’t envy anyone having to make that decision as to the best way to go to present these games. 

Whilst personally I think the more luck based aspect of not knowing exactly what you're passing to people gives the game a bit of flair, I can see how this may be the thing that puts people off. On the subject of luck, unless one player gets consistently unlucky with some high scoring cards, the 77 point end game trigger can take a while to get to which means that games can have the potential to out stay their welcome. If you're worried about this then I’d set the bar at a lower number and see how people are feeling and if they want to carry on.

Klink is going to be taking up residence in my rotation of small box card games that I take with me on travels. It fits nicely into that category of quick, easy to teach games to pull out at the start or the end of a game night.