Alibis is a cooperative word game for 1-6 people: think Cooperative Codenames!

This is a game about guessing words cooperatively as a group.

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing/Gameplay

This is a very smallish game: see can of Coke above for scale.

Each player gets a little white-erase board to write a single word on (two of these boards of you play 2 or 3 players).

The white-erase boards are used to write a single word; players are trying to connect two “words” together (much like So Clover, where you try connect two words with one word, or Codenames where you give a word clue to connect some words together).

Each player is given some guys to alibi: in a 2-Player or 3-Player game, you get 4 guys.

The single words are supposed to provide “alibis” for two of the guys in the line up!  See above!  For example, “magma” (the + board, upper left) is providing alibis for guy 1 (“island”) and guy 7 (“dragon”).

So, you’d mark a + on the guy 1 and guy 7 on your board! You are keeping track of everyone who has an alibi!

Basically, there is always one guy that’s “the perpetrator” and you, as the players, are trying to alibi everyone else!  It’s a word guessing game!  Can you guess the perpetrator by alibiing everyone else????

This game really isn’t very thematic; the line-up with weird villains has nothing to do with the game.  It’s just a cooperative word-guessing game.  To be 100% clear, there is no real communications among players EXCEPT for the words given.  (That part is very much like Codenames, but not So Clover).

No Solo.

There is no solo mode for this; this is nominally a party game for 2-6 players.

Two Players

My 2-Player game with Don went great.  It works well, as you get 4 guys to alibi, so you have to provide 2 words!  You actually get more options in the 2 (and 3-Player game) as you can choose how to group your 4 guys into 2 groups.  There are 9 guys on the board (see above), and you have to alibi 8 of them!

2-Player worked well, it was fun.

Three Players

In 3-Player mode, like 2-Player, in 3-Player mode, each player gets 4 guys to alibi. See above as me and Caroline and Nathan play!   The difference is that there are more guys out on the board! There is ALWAYS must be one guy out (who is the perpetrator).  In the 3-player game, the players alibi 12 guys, with the 13th guy being the perpetrator! See above.

The 3-player game worked great.

Four Players

The 4-Player game wasn’t … quite as fun.  See above as me, Sara, Teresa, and Andrew play! It’s the same game but you only get 2 guys to alibi (instead of 4), which means you only get to craft one word!  There are 9 guys out, and the 4-Players alibi 8 of them.  See above.

This means you have to come up with a single word to connect two guys.  What does “stuffed” (above) mean?  I don’t know, and I wrote it!!!  And the two words (guys) you get may suck and have nothing in common.  Sure, this happens in Codenames a lot, but at least you start with many many words to connect! You only get “stuck” with two bad words at the end.  In this scenario, you only have two words!  Hopefully they will be easy to connect!

The 4, 5, and 6 player game all play like this; the players each get 2 guys to alibi which means they only get to write/craft one word.

Scoring

The scoring is a little wonky.  Every time you guess something correctly, you remove “heat” (see heat above) from the game!  The more your remove, the better you do!  At the very end of the game, you get told you how good or how awful you are by how mush “heat” you remove.

Eh, it’s nominally a party game, so the score doesn’t matter too much.

Conclusion

If you love Codenames, you will probably love this! If you hate Codenames (Joe, I am looking at you), you will probably hate this as well.

I think Alibis is better at 2 and 3-players, as the players get choices as how to group their 4 guys, so they can come up with better groups of 2 words.  The 4-Player and higher count game “works”, but it’s just not as fun; It like the worst part of Codenames when you have exactly two words that don’t have anything in common … and you don’t know what to do.

This is a fun game, but I’d recommend So Clover over this. I think So Clover is a stronger party game, partly because you have more words and more opportunities to connect things.  Probably more important is that in So Clover players can talk amongst each other, rather than just be quiet (like in Alibis).  That interaction is so much more fun in a party game.

Still, this is light and easy to get into.  It’s fun to play: I’d give this a 6.5 or 7/10 as a 4, 5, or 6 player game and a 7.5/10 as a 2 or 3-player game.

This would probably make our Top 10 Cooperative Party Games, maybe just not near the top.