A Simple Illusion

Many years back, I wrote about Timeline -- part game, part education tool, part activity. I noted that while it seemed at least moderately fun, it seemed to have an inherently short lifespan. Indeed, I can scarcely remember the last time my group played it.

How do you extend the viability of Timeline as a game? Simple, remove the educational elements!

Illusion is a straightforward card game that you can teach anyone to play in a matter of seconds. You use a deck of cards featuring a wide variety of artistic designs. Each image features 4 colors -- red, yellow, green, and blue -- in a variety of patterns. Each round, you focus on one of those colors in particular and, in turn order, players reveal one card at a time from the deck. When you flip a card, your job is to insert it into a growing line face-up on the table. Exactly how much of the surface area of your card is covered with the color in question? Insert your card into the line in what you think is the proper spot, where all cards to one side of it have LESS of the color and all cards to the other side have MORE.

When you think there's a mistake in the line (whether it just made by the previous player, or it's been there for a while before reaching your turn), you may "challenge," flipping over the cards to the reverse side and revealing the actual color values. If you're wrong (and everything is in the correct order), the player you challenged receives a point. If you're right, you get the point. The first player to 3 points wins.

Because there aren't any historical facts or any especially memorable information here, the game has much higher replayability than Timeline. The deck is large, and the designs are quite varied. Plus, you never know which of the four colors you'll be focused on until you're actually playing a round. You may have seen a particular card before, but you may not have been looking at it before in the way you're looking at it now.

Illusion makes a descent time filler, something you can bring out for just 5 or 10 minutes. It's also good when you've got a wide age range to bridge -- it's easily understood by a very young child, and that child isn't necessarily at too much of a disadvantage to any adults playing with them. Yet, at the same time, it isn't all that compelling. There isn't really any strategy here. It's a guessing game -- one where you can make educated guesses, but a guessing game all the same.

There are other games that I think are just as easily taught, work for younger players almost as effectively, and fit in just as short a time frame as Illusion. The Mind would be a recent hit, while No Thanks would be a personal favorite from farther back. I'd probably grade Illusion only a C+ or so. But on the other hand, I probably wouldn't refuse to play if someone suggested it. It's so lightweight and so fast that it's hardly worth the time to object.