Spirits! Speak to Us!

One of the more crowded genres in board gaming is the "large group word game." Or perhaps it just seems like a crowded genre to me because there are a lot of great games in it -- games like Codenames, Decrypto, Just One, So Clover, and more. Now I've discovered another game to add to that list, Phantom Ink.

Players split into two teams, each team designating one person as their "Spirit." The other players on each team are the "Mediums." The two Spirits are given the same secret word, some object that each is trying to communicate "from the spirit world" to their Mediums before the other team can guess.

The Mediums on each team work with a hand of question cards -- each card an unusual way of getting information about the secret object. "What fictional character would be most likely to use it?" "What would happen to it if you buried it for a year?" "What is another object of similar size?" "In what room of the house would you most likely encounter it?" Each round, the Mediums of one team select two questions to pass to their Spirit. The Spirit discard one and then answers the other.

How the questions are answered is to me the most fun part of the game. The Spirit thinks of their answer -- a single word, or even a phrase -- and then begins writing out that answer one letter at a time. All players see the answer as the Spirit writes it out letter by letter... but only the Mediums on the one team knows exactly what the question was. To avoid giving away too much information to the other team, the Mediums can call "Silencio!" at any time to make the Spirit stop writing the rest of their answer. Perhaps they can stop the clue at a point where they know the rest of what will be written, but think the other team can't guess. Or perhaps they only think they know what the Spirit was trying to write.

When it's one team's turn to get an answer from their Spirit, they can instead try to guess the secret word. The Mediums seize the pencil and they begin writing out their guess one letter at a time. With each correct letter, the Spirit knocks the table in confirmation. If the Spirit falls silent, the guess is wrong, and the Mediums have forfeited their turn. Back and forth the teams alternate (with a few other small rules quirks I've omitted) until one team guesses the word.

I kicked off this post with a list of great word guessing games. I've played them all -- and thoroughly enjoyed them -- many times. But what Phantom Ink has that those other games don't is a wonderfully appropriate theme. Codenames is nominally about spies arranging covert meetings and passing messages to each other. Decrypto is nominally about slipping hidden spyware past rival programmers. So Clover has four-leaf-clover-shaped player boards, but nothing else thematic. And Just One doesn't bother with theme at all. To me, the experience of playing any of those games is essentially a "flavorless" one. You and your friends are just playing with words -- though you are having enough fun, in my experience, that no greater theme is necessary.

With Phantom Ink, designers Mary Flanagan and Max Seidman have demonstrated that flavor can matter in one of these games -- being inextricably linked to the gameplay, and adding to the fun of playing it. When I've explained the "seance" premise of the game to new players, I've more than once been met with knowing nods as players realize how "spirit writing" will play a role in the game -- and wide grins when they learn that the Spirits will knock in reply to their guesses. Phantom Ink simply cannot be a game where the theme was added after the fact; the idea of spirit communication clearly inspired the whole thing. And it led to gameplay that's distinct from those many other word games.

Is this a "killer" for any of those other games? Probably not. They all have their niche, after all. So Clover does a good job letting everyone give clues without any one person feeling "on the spot." Just One offers simultaneous play for every player. Decrypto is considerably more complicated than the rest -- a plus for some groups, and a minus for others. And Codenames is, simply, the granddaddy of them all that you'll find in more stores than any other.

Yet at the same time, I've played a ton of all those those other games -- so much that they've all lost their luster (just a little bit) over time. I'm still happy to play any of them. But I'm perhaps even happier to have something shiny and new in the mix too. I've enjoyed Phantom Ink, am interested in its standalone expansion (Phantom Ink: Arcana), and I look forward to overplaying it just like all those others. I give it a B+.