Reviews The Tattoo

Points here for poor vision


BRISTOL, Connecticut, U.S.A. — As soon as you see Squint’s bright green and blue color scheme, you can almost tell that it is a game for people with an artist’s eye.
Squint, like most great games, has a simple concept. The object is to build various nouns (which are on bright green cards) using tiny white cards with simple lines and shapes on them. There are different difficulties of play, for beginners and for more advanced players. Some easy examples of things to build are a porch, a plus sign, or a plant. More difficult ones include an ambulance, berries or a bride.
When someone playing the game correctly guesses the object that is being built before the timer runs out, both the builder and the guesser get from one to three scoring chips, depending on difficulty. At the end of the game, whoever holds the most little lime-green chips is the winner.
The game is fun, and great for ages 12 to adult. Although the box says from three to eight players, there isn’t any reason why more couldn’t play.
Artists squint their eyes for many things while creating a drawing or a painting. When they do this, they are checking for good overall shape and shading. It helps to pull a picture all together, and to see if it really does look okay.
Using this logic in Squint, it seemed to work pretty well. By actually squinting your eyes, you can see the shapes that people are trying to create a little better. It may even help for the builder to squint his or her eyes to tell if their object is coming out the way that they envision it to be.
There are three fun ways to play Squint, including an easy level (light Squint), a hard level (Squint Challenge) or Progressive Squint, where players try to make as many shapes as possible within the given time.
It doesn’t take long to play Squint. The fewer people you have, the more rounds you play. The more people you have, the less rounds you play, as specified by the directions. The player who holds the most chips at the end wins.
Even if you aren’t the artistic type, Squint is still a good game to play. It sparks conversation, arguments, and a good time for all players, regardless of if you win or not.
Try Squint out. You may find yourself making objects out of lines more often than you ever thought possible.

Kate Haire is a Reporter for Youth Journalism International.

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