“Coffee.”
Is it dark roast? milky tan? Burnt countertop? If it’s black to dark brown, which exact shade of dark brown is coffee?

Hues and Cues is a game that lives entirely in the disconnect between your brain and your eyeballs. A party game where you try to lead your friends to a single specific shade among an impressive gradient of 480 tiny squares using one word clues. That’s it. That’s the whole game.

Okay, a bit more detail. The active player draws a card, secretly picks one of four colours listed, then gives the group a single word clue. Then everyone guesses. Then they get a second word. Then, they guess again. Then the active player drops a frame around the specific shade they were trying to lead their friends to, and points are awarded based on how close everyone is to that frame. Then the next person becomes the clue-giver, and play continues until everyone’s had a turn (or until the mood sours, and you all decide to pack it in).

At its best, Hues and Cues delivers joy when you manage to lead people to the perfect shade of steely-blue with an off the wall clue like “Shark”. It’s great a facilitating fun conversations like “Are we talking Dutch Delft blue or Portuguese tile blue?” or “Blue-spruce green, or dark pine tree green?”. It’s especially great for larger groups, when you need something quick, casual, and low-commitment. If you don’t care about the score, players can drop in and out. There’s no setup. No fiddly rules. It’s as simple as pointing at a square and arguing about what shade of red Mario’s cap really is.

But while the concept is novel and clever, the experience can wear thin, fast.

In small groups, the game feels more like an exercise in tedium than entertainment. By the time everyone has given one clue, you’ve pretty much seen all the game has to offer. Sure, the board is massive, but so many of the colours are so similar that distinguishing F14 from F15 feels pointless and hopeless. And heaven help you if you’re even mildly colorblind, it’s actually unplayable at that point. It’s actually a bit ironic that a game about visual nuance has a big problem where the colours on the cards don’t really match the ones on the board. It’s a reminder why Pantone sells colour guides and swatches, so you can be sure that the colour you’re thinking of is properly replicated amonst all aspects of your production.

The clue-giving, while conceptually fun, is often harder than it should be. I spent more time agonizing over my second word clue than the rest of the table spent guessing. My first clue was already perfect, how can I improve on the last clue? I can’t think of anything any more light purple than lilac! It’s a frustration that sometimes just leads to awkward silence while one player is trying to think of anything helpful, while everyone else sits around and watches them think.

Hues and Cues is a fun idea, but it lacks staying power. The most fun you’ll have is probably the first time, when everyone’s discovering just how we all see “grape” as a different shade of purple (and one person chooses green). It’s really hard to recommend it, when other party games are so much more replayable and fun. Games like Dixit come to mind.

If you’re looking for a simple, social filler to throw down on a table during a family reunion, Hues and Cues might spark a weird debate about what the colour of kalamata olives are, or what shade of teal Bulbasaur really is. Just don’t expect much more than that.