Game Reviews: Mensa Mind Games®, year 2008

Eye Know -- Mensa Select® Winner

• Replay Value (1-10): 7
• Fun Factor (1-10): 8
• Worth Buying (1-10): 8
• MMG Popularity Rank (out of 54): 5th

Each game starts with a set of photographs on the gameboard, each represents some noun such as a person, place, or other concept. On your turn, choose a photograph, and attempt to identify it; if you're correct, you win a point. Then, you can wager up to 25 points on one of three trivia questions on the back (you have to wager before you hear them) -- the true-or-false question pays even odds, the three-choice multiple-choice question pays 2:1 odds, and the open-ended question pays 3:1. Play continues until each player has had five attempts. There are two modifications to this system -- one, if you can't identify a picture, the privilege passes on to the next player (this tends to only happen near the end of the game, when the pictures that everyone can identify are gone); and two, instead of attempting to get money by answering the trivia question, you can auction off that privilege to another player.

There are two new elements about this game that make it different from a standard trivia game: first, the extra layer of image identification before the trivia question; and second, using a chips-and-wager system instead of advancing pawns on some sort of gameboard. These two elements don't really harmonize together in any meaningful way, but both are a refreshing change of pace from how trivia games usually work. One drawback is that the trivia questions seemed mostly easy to us, but maybe that's okay in a pretty casual game anyway. (We made one mistake when playing, forgetting that there was a bet limit of 25 -- as a result, we ran out of chips!)