Alibis review ⏤ Catch me if you can

The word association/deduction genre has had some big names throughout its history. Codenames is the most popular, but other games like Decrypto, Just One, and Landmarks have pushed the genre forward, each in different ways. You can find a word game for everyone, depending on how complicated you’d like your word deduction game to be. Later this year, Alibis by Allplay joins the roster as a lightweight party-style word game. As the field for this genre is so crowded, Alibis is going to have a tough time fitting in, so let’s look at the lineup and see how Alibis stacks up.

Overview

At its core, Alibis is a simple game, all the players are working together to identify the correct criminal who lacks an alibi. Depending on the player count, a lineup of colorful suspects will be laid out, and everyone will be secretly assigned two of them. The one remaining criminal card will be set aside facedown, this is the criminal everyone is trying to identify. Each criminal in the lineup will have a random word assigned to them, and your job is to create a clue that associates your two criminals together. One by one, each player will show off their clue with everyone else marking which criminals they think are associated with that clue. As you go through all the clues, everyone will eventually be left with only one criminal who has no alibi.

You play over three rounds with the ultimate goal of emptying a pool of tokens. Players can remove tokens as they make correct guesses. If you’re able to empty the pool of tokens in three rounds, everyone will win.

Gameplay

Alibis calls itself a “Thinky Party” game, and I think that description is apt. The game is very easy to learn and quick to play, but its colorful nature is a little deceptive. You are only going to be able to give three clues throughout the game, and those clues can be hard to figure out. Depending on what words are on the board, your clue has to be precise. You might be trying to associate two words together while also steering away from other words on the board. This aspect of the game surprised me as there were rounds where I had my clue instantly and others where I had to put some serious thought into my clue. You can break Alibis out for a quick play and still find yourself with a little bit of brain burn.

Alibis does a good job of straddling the line between being challenging without being too unforgiving. As there are multiple rounds, there is wiggle room for making mistakes, which I find important for word games. I’m also a fan of this being a completely cooperative game, as it keeps in line with the lighter tone. Draining the pool of tokens is useful as a win condition, but I found it to be more of an afterthought. It was nice if we emptied the pool, but it didn’t seem that important to the people I played with.

Components

Alibis fits in Allplays' small box line of games perfectly with its colorful artwork. I don’t love the artwork for all the criminals. (The bunny man stares into my soul.) Each of the criminals has personality, and they are all distinct enough that players don’t mix them up. The rest of the components are perfectly serviceable for this type of game. I wish the player boards were a bit bigger, but that’s about it.