While Scrabble reigned supreme as the ultimate word game for decades, app games such as Zynga’s Words with Friends have turned consumers away from physical games and toward digital play with friends. But now, Creative Foundry Games has reinvigorated the power of the tile, bringing back the fun of tabletop word games with KerFlip.
Players blindly draw tiles from the bag and place them ivory side up on the game board and race to make words using all of the tiles shown—but without touching them. Instead, players shout out words as they see them. Each player may only call one word, and the first player to call a word has a shot at the most points. Words must be at least three letters long—but the longer the word you find, the more points you get.
The first player who called his or her word flips over all of the tiles in that word to reveal the orange side. Each tile is worth 10 points. The next player then flips all of the tiles in his or her word, but if any of the tiles are already flipped, that tile is now only worth five points.
The game also includes some exciting bonus play. If a tile has a one, two, or three depicted in the bottom right corner, that player may draw the number of cards indicated to make the tile worth up to 60 points more. Additionally, if a lightening tile is drawn, the first player to call a word gets a 25-point bonus.
In this game, it’s not all about word integrity. For example, if a player calls a super long word but doesn’t find it until all of the other players have called their words, he or she could be left with very few points. The game is a perfect combination of speed, spelling, and creative thinking.
The box not only serves as packaging for the game, but the game board is built right in. There’s also a seriously creative cleanup method, that allows players to simply sweep used tiles into the box and give it a shake, pushing the tiles neatly into a small cardboard container with ease and efficiency.
Designed for kids ages 8 and up, KerFlip takes about 15 minutes to play—perfect even for kids with low attention spans. Resoundingly different from word games already on the market, KerFlip is fast and engaging for adults as well as kids. So, close out your apps, put away your smartphones, and engage in some real-time, face-to-face, challenging word play.