Pictureka! by Parker Brothers review
Toys | Damon Cap | February 26, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Pictureka! made its way to family game night a few weeks or so ago and “Find it fast, find it first!” is a very good decription of how the game works. Kudos to the marketing department over at Parker Brothers on that one. The call of “Pictureka!” echoed throughout our neighborhood on Thursdays, which happen to be family game night at our house. The game lends itself to yelling pandemonium, in a good way.
To get started, you arrange the game tiles in a 3×3 square and that becomes your gameboard. You then separate the 3 different color cards into their own decks, shuffle them, and place them facedown somewhere near the gameboard. We always let the youngest player go first, and while the game has the stated ages of 6+, our 4 year old got to go first. You roll a die and draw a card from the deck that matches the color you rolled on the die. Those 3 different color decks are actually mission cards and you do something different for each one. In addition the colors on the mission cards some of the mission cards have action symbols that will cause you to switch the location of tiles, flip tiles, or rotate tiles. Remember that Pictureka! is all about finding things, so mixes the tiles around can throw you off a bit on your turn. First player to win 6 cards, wins the game.
The Green and Blue Cards are the easiest to understand. If you draw a Green Card it is a personal mission card. That means you read the mission aloud and then you roll the die with numbers on it. To win this card you have to find the number of objects you just rolled. Wait though, there is a timer! So if you find enough of the objects before the sand runs out of the timer you get to keep the card. We had a fun time teasing the person with the green card by saying, oh I see them, oh I see one of those, etc… In a fun way, and we all laughed.
The Blue Card is a find it first card, where everyone gets to play. You turn the card faceup and everyone needs to find the object the quickest. The player who finds it first yells “Pictureka!“, points out the object and keeps the card. The Blue Cards are the favorite with our children.
The Red card is the outbid card, where the highest bidder gets to take the turn. Without looking at the card, you decide how many of the objects you think you might be able to find before time runs out. You either bid or pass. The player to your left can either bid higher or pass and this continues until each player has made a decision. The highest bidder now reads the mission and has to find the number of objects they have bid before the timer runs out. If they do not find them, you place the card out of play and the turn is over. The way that I read the rules that means that you can bid as high as high as you want and really you do not have a penalty. So we added that you lose a turn if you are the high bidder and do not find the number of objects, this stops people from over bidding. We could just be reading the rules incorrectly, but I am never against house rules.
After speaking to my parents they decided they wanted to try a few rounds with the kids while they were over our house doing a bit of baby-sitting. After they played a few games, they decided to take it back to their house to play with some of their adult friends. I was told that they enjoyed it as well.
We have played a bunch of times and still have no idea where everything is, so the game has replay value. A fun game for the kids and it sure is fun trying to find what is on the card before everyone else.
Please note: Our review copy of Pictureka! was provided by Hasbro.
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Tags: Ages: 6 +, Hasbro, Parker Brothers, Pictureka!
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