Alibis is a party-style word association game that succeeds as a small but welcome evolution on So Clover and Codenames.
If you like word association games, Alibis is worth getting. If you like So Clover but wish it played better with more players and had more game to it than simply discussing which words match best together, then it's definitely worth getting. Alibis is a welcome take on the genre that's fun, breezy, and replayable.
Buy it from:
Allplay
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Allplay is coming out with a new wave of small-box board games and I'm excited. They span a variety of genres and mechanisms, and two of them caught my eye as games right up my alley—Alibis and Vegas Strip—and I've been given the opportunity to review both!
Let's start with Alibis, a party-style word association game that'll feel familiar if you've played Codenames or So Clover. In fact, the influence of those two games are hard to miss in Alibis, especially with the card design. But to say that it's a straight-up clone or knockoff would be a disservice. I'm keen to call it an evolution that takes the best of both worlds and moves in a new direction.
I love party games and I love word association games, so keep those biases in mind with this review. That said, let's dive into how Alibis plays, what I love and don't love about it, and whether it's worth adding to your collection or even replacing the word association games you already have.
This review is based on a review copy of Alibis provided by Allplay, but my thoughts and opinions are my own.
Alibis is a cooperative word association game that's light, breezy, yet thinky. You're working together with everyone else, first to come up with your own word association, then to guess everyone else's word associations. The goal is the clear the pile of Heat tokens via correct guesses.
It all starts with the central board of Suspects, with each Suspect holding a random word assigned from the deck of 91 word cards. Each player is randomly assigned two Suspects and must secretly write a one-word clue (no spaces, no hyphens) that relates to both words held by their two Suspects.
Meanwhile, there's always 1 extra Suspect that isn't assigned to anyone. This Suspect is the Perpetrator, and everyone is trying to figure out who the Perpetrator is. Good clues will make this easier.
Once everyone has written down their one-word clues, all clues are revealed and players enter the guessing phase. During this phase, each player uses their personal Deduction Board to mark down which Suspects belong to each player and which Suspect they believe to be the Perpetrator.
Guesses must be private and hidden. If you're unsure about certain Suspects, you don't have to mark them down on your board. However, everyone must mark a Perpetrator on their board, even if it's a flat-out guess.
Each player's clue board has a unique shape symbol on it! This makes it easy to record the identities of each Suspect on your Deduction Board, as you can just use each shape symbol instead of letters, numbers, etc.
When everyone is done making their guesses on their Deduction Boards, each player takes a turn to reveal who their Suspects were. If anyone correctly guessed both of a player's Suspects, remove 1 Heat token from the pile. Then, after everyone has gone, reveal the Perpetrator. For each player who correctly guessed the Perpetrator, remove 3 Heat tokens from the pile.
And that's one round completed. Assign new word cards to each Suspect and do it all again as round two, then again as round three. If at any point the Heat token pile is depleted, you all win! Otherwise, at the end of round three, compare your remaining Heat with the scoring table in the rulebook.
The setup for Alibis can feel clunky the first time, but it all makes sense once you've played it through. Each player gets a Deduction Board, a clue board, and a dry erase marker to start. You also have to lay out the Suspects to create the central board, shuffle up the word cards, and create the pile of Heat tokens.
Finally, you have to draw a word card for each Suspect, then shuffle up the Suspect cards and deal two to each player, then put the last remaining Suspect card face-down on the Perpetrator board. All in all, setup takes 3 to 5 minutes, with most of the time spent digging around for components.
Like any great party game, Alibis doesn't need much table space. The central board of Suspects is reasonably small, and beside it you have a pile of Heat tokens, the word cards, and the Perpetrator. Each player only needs a tiny bit of space for their Deduction Board, clue board, and two Suspect cards. That's it! Fiddliness aside, you can fit and play Alibis anywhere.
Alibis is a smidge more complicated than most word association games, but only a smidge! While the overall concept is straightforward, the three-phase flow of each round might trip you up the first few times. Write your clue, guess everyone else's clues, then reveal and score. For players, it's pretty simple.
But whoever is "hosting" the game needs to understand the setup on a deeper level than everyone else, as there are some nuances. Who gets what? How many Suspects? How many Heat tokens? If playing with 2 or 3 players, what are the setup tweaks to know about?
I'm making it sound more complicated than it is. All I'm saying is that Alibis is not like Taboo or Wavelength where you can just bust it out and get going right away. It's one level more involved, for better or worse.
Given that it's a party-style game, don't go into Alibis expecting a large decision space with tough choices. It boils down to word association. But what I like about Alibis is that adds just a bit of extra spice with the Perpetrator, which can only be guessed correctly if everyone is on the ball.
The main decision in Alibis is coming up with your clue word. You have to cleverly bridge your two Suspects while dodging the other Suspects' words, and the gameplay here is almost identical to So Clover. What's tricky is that the word cards in Alibis are simultaneously generic yet distinct, so I find that it's easy to connect any two Suspects but difficult to do so with precision. It's hard to craft the one exact word you need—notably harder here than in other games like it.
Once you have your word, the rest is about guessing what everyone else's clue words mean. For each clue, you have to work backwards and figure out which two Suspects can be ruled out by it. You think it'd be easy, but again, it's harder here than in other word association games because the connections and links tend to be more abstract and obscure. Sometimes the answers are obvious, sometimes you have to think five layers deep. It depends on the makeup of the Suspect board and the pool of word cards you have to work with.
One thing I like is that you're encouraged to consider all clue words together. If Player A's clue was "chicken" and you think it applies to three or four Suspects and can't narrow it down, you can use the clues from Players B, C, and D to help eliminate some of those Suspect options for Player A. This whole process is useful for deducing the Perpetrator, which you can only do by perfectly guessing and ruling out everyone's Suspect matches. Piecing it all together and arriving at the right answer is tough, but possible!
There are two points of randomness in Alibis: the word cards that are assigned to each Suspect, and which of those two words you have to bridge. It's all in the setup, and that means the difficulty of a given setup can fluctuate based on where the cards fall. You might luck out with a Suspect pairing with an obvious bridge word, or you might get stuck for 10 minutes on a real doozy.
But once those assignments are made, there's no further luck involved. It comes down to your skill and creativity as a word artisan, your ability to clearly connect two words for your teammates, as well as how cleverly you can decipher clue words and eliminate Suspects. Alibis is not a lucky game at all.
With Alibis, you pretty much know if it'll be fun for you or not before you sit down to play. Do you enjoy word association games like Codenames, So Clover, Just One, even Dixit? I'd also include the Connections game by The New York Times. You know, not just word games, but word association games.
Because if you do, then you'll like Alibis because it's more of the same, with a slight twist on the formula that makes it a true team operation without subjective discussions, answer-by-committee, or quarterbacking. And it's thinky and quiet, not a hilarious party starter with tons of table talk. The fun of Alibis is the satisfaction you get from creatively bridging words, successfully guessing what clues mean, and collectively scoring the Heat down to zero.
If you don't like word association at all, steer clear.
Alibis has a nice pace to it. You spend a few minutes thinking up your connecting clue word, then you go around and spend a few more minutes deciphering everyone else's clue words, and then you score. Rinse and repeat for two more rounds and you're done. It takes about 20 minutes...
...unless you get stuck with a pair of Suspect words that just. don't. have. a. way. to. bridge. them. together. Or they might have some obvious connections, but those might rope in some of the other Suspects and cause confusion. You might have to wrack your brain for a long time before throwing your hands up and settling on a less-than-perfect clue that's sure to mess everyone up. And if someone else is the one who's stuck, you and everyone else will just have to sit there and twiddle your thumbs until they're ready.
So, yes, Alibis is a smooth game when no one is stuck—but it is the kind of game where people will get stuck. Fortunately, you only have to worry about one pair of Suspects at a time, so most stuck moments don't last too long.
You're coming up with clues for others to guess, and they're doing the same for you to guess. There's also a subtle layer of extra cooperation where clue words need to jibe together so people can deduce the Perpetrator. I also like that Heat is scored for a Suspect pairing as long as one player guesses it correctly, which bumps up that teamwork feel. Even if everyone screws up, all you need is one person getting it right for that clutch, fist-pumping satisfaction.
But there's no direct cooperation. You don't discuss anything. You don't come up with clues together. There's no strategic back-and-forth or tactical coordination. It's light, breezy, and almost like group solitaire. You're here for the word association puzzles and the other players are your puzzle generators.
The Alibis experience is notably different at 2-3 players than it is at 4-6 players. With 2-3 players, each player actually gets two clue boards and two sets of Suspect cards, and must come up with a different clue word per pair. In other words, it's like you're playing for two people. Meanwhile, with 4-6 players, you only have one set of Suspect cards and one clue to come up with.
It's harder at the 4+ player count, which is what I consider to be the "real" game. You have less information when it comes time to guess, so it's more difficult to guess Suspect pairings and deduce the Perpetrator. The 2-3 player game is still enjoyable, don't get me wrong. But it's easier and less exciting.
Personally, I'd say So Clover is the better game for 2-3 players while Alibis excels at 4-6 players, fixing the issues I have with So Clover at higher player counts. I'm happily keeping both in my collection.
Alibis feels ever so slightly fiddly to me. The central board of Suspects is disjointed and can slide around, and the repeated shuffling and dealing of word cards and Suspect cards gets old. But it's minor in the grand scheme.
That said, I do wish Alibis came with player shields. When it's time to make guesses on your Deduction Board, you're supposed to keep your guesses secret. One way to do that? Hide it, but that's inconvenient. Another way? Flip it over, but that risks smudging your marks and messing up your guesses. A simple shield would be great to have. Of course, fitting those shields into the box would be a challenge, so I get why they weren't included.
I don't have much to say here. Alibis is very replayable, both in the sense of variability (with plenty of word cards and their randomly assigned pairings) and in the sense of lasting power (you could play it through the night if you really wanted to, assuming you don't burn your brain out first).
There's depth enough for it to be a satisfying word association experience, yet light enough for it to feel breezy and quick, with the deductive element bringing a new cooperative twist that involves no discussion. I've enjoyed it every time it has come out, and I find myself looking forward to it again.
Say what you will about Allplay's small-box games, you can't deny that they've put a lot of thought into their designs. Alibis is a good example. It has no wasted components, and each piece is made to play well and feel good in hand. Could it be better? Yes. Is it a solid production as is? Also yes.
The word cards are easy to read and double-sided. If you've played Codenames before, you know how it has word cards that point in both directions so players can read them from both directions—but the words going in one direction are notably less prominent. Not the case with Alibis. It's a small detail, but one I really appreciate because it minimizes confusion and inconvenience.
I also appreciate that each word card has different words on both sides, so the 91-card deck actually provides 182 possible words. Win for replayability.
The clue boards and Deduction Boards are well-designed and durable. I've come to love dry erase boards for party-style games, and the ones in Alibis are some of the best. The artwork is great and the graphics are welcoming, but most of all they just feel lovely to write on. Plus, they're made of thick, robust cardboard that will easily last a long time.
The markers write well, but the erasers are smudgy. When I first played Alibis, I was caught off guard by how pointy the included markers are. The ultra-fine tip is not one I've seen in board games before! But I suppose it makes sense since the boards are relatively small. And they write well, so I can't complain.
The only thing I don't like is that the erasers don't erase well. Sure, it's a problem that's common to most board game markers, but it's still a problem! One that I can fortunately deal with.
I appreciate the small box, but it can be hard to pack up. If you like to bag your tokens and cards like I do, then shoving it all into this tiny box isn't the easiest task—which is weird since the game came with bags, implying that I'm supposed to use them. I might figure it out one day, but for now I'll just have to be content with a bit of lid lift with Alibis.
If you like word association games, Alibis is worth getting. If you like So Clover but wish it played better with more players and had more game to it than simply discussing which words match best together, then it's definitely worth getting. Alibis is a welcome take on the genre that's fun, breezy, and replayable.
Buy it from:
Allplay
If you buy using these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It's one way to support me and this site. Thanks!
