Bullseye – Can You Guess?

There are tons of party word-guessing games out there, with many variations: team-based, individual, cooperative; drawing clues, using gestures, doing word-association, and more.

In Bullseye, your whole team builds clues so the Archer can hit the target.

Bullseye is a cooperative game for 3-8 players, ages 10 and up. It was designed by Grace Kendall and Mike Belsole and published by 25th Century Games.

How to Play

Set up the target board and the face-down deck of category cards. Then, give each player an arrow board and a dry erase marker.

Choose a player to be the first Archer. They draw two category cards and pick one, handing it to the player on their left as the clue-giver.

The clue-giver writes a word on the back of the card that fits the category. Then they show it to everyone except the Archer. This is the word the Archer must guess. Then they place the card on the target board, with the category showing out.

Each of the clue-givers secretly think of a clue for the secret word. They write just the first letter of their clue on their own arrow board. Then all of the clue givers reveal simultaneously. Finally, the Archer has a chance to guess at the secret word, or pass.

If they pass, all the clue-givers pass their arrow boards clockwise to the next player. Then, the clue-givers must guess what clue word the previous player was thinking of. They write what they think is the next letter of the clue. Then it is once again time to reveal and give the Archer another opportunity to guess or pass!

Once the Archer thinks they can make a guess, they tell everyone at the table. If their guess was correct, mark the points on the appropriate ring of the target board.

But if the Archer guesses incorrectly, it’s a miss. The round ends with no points awarded.

Either way, pass the target to the next player clockwise to be the new Archer. They draw two new category cards while the other players erase their arrow boards, and start another round.

After everyone has had at least one chance to be the Archer (or two chances at 3-5 players), the game ends. Add the best five scores from the target board to get your group’s final score!

Smaller Group Variation

At three players, it’s hard to have enough clues. So each clue-giver gets two arrows to write on. The arrows still move “one space” clockwise after each letter, so they’ll still cycle through both players.

Impressions

Bullseye is an unusual game with friendly competition amidst the cooperation (who has the best clue?). But it turns out Bullseye has two layers of clues! The first layer is much like Just One – everyone wants to give helpful clues for the guesser, but without matching too well with everyone else. The more clues they can use, the faster the Archer can make a guess. But the second layer is among the clue-givers: they need to be paying attention to what everyone else around them knows, and try to predict what a clue is trying to say – without getting into a rut of the same clue over and over.

Because of the way the group has to work through clues together, we found that Bullseye is best with a group that isn’t too tightly knit. When we played with only family, it fell a little flat: we’d either have too many similar clues, or hurt feelings when another clue-giver “messed up” a clue that should have been obvious.

But with our friend group, we had a great time, even when our kids also joined in. We had to think harder about what kind of shared clues would work for everyone at the table, which led to more focused clues but also more creativity.

I wouldn’t recommend Bullseye as an ice-breaker for a group that doesn’t know each other at all. There does need to be some synergy and common experience to draw on, to prevent the game from straying too far into frustration.

If you and your group would like to shoot your shot at a clever multi-level cooperative word game, you can get your own copy of Bullseye directly from 25th Century Games, from Amazon, or you can ask your friendly local game store!

Or, if you’re feeling lucky, see if you can win a copy from us!

Bullseye giveaway

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Bullseye from 25th Century Games for this review.

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