Cost: ~$35.00 (exact price unknown) From:Face to Face Game Co., Box 15036, Beverly Hills CA, 90209 Players: 2-24 Playing Time: 60-120 minutes Type of game: Family Complexity: 3 Skill level: 6 Reviewed by: Peter Sarrett, Issue 2.3, Spring 1994
Take the faces of famous people, obscure them behind plastic gizmos, and reveal bits of their faces a little at a time until someone can guess the person's identity. The essence of simplicity. It's an idea so obvious, at first you can't help but wonder why nobody had ever done it before. How disappointing, then, that Face to Face just isn't as much fun as it seems it should be.
The Trivial Pursuit-sized box weighs in at a respectable double hernia. Within rest two boxes containing 800 one-sided cards (200 each of 4 colors), each showing a black-and-white photo of a famous person. One card of each color is inserted into the like-colored plastic card holder. These gizmos look pretty nifty. The card slips between two clear plastic sheets sandwiched together by an opaque frame. The front of the holder features six sliding doors labeled F, A, C, E, I, and D. Each door can be pulled to the side, snapping into a locked position and allowing the portion of the face which lies beneath it to show through.
The card holders rest flat on the four corners of the game board. The board features two tracks of lettered spaces. A square track rings the board's perimeter, and a diamond track lies within the square such that the vertices of the diamond bisect the sides of the square. Special spaces bridge the two tracks at these intersection points.
Players (or teams) take turns rolling dice and moving their piece along the track in any direction. The color of the space landed on determines which face that player will have an opportunity to guess, and the letter on the space indicates which door gets opened. After the door is opened (or if the indicated door is already open) the player may try to guess the name of the person pictured on that card. A booklet contains the names matching all the faces, each with a unique index. A seventh door on each frame conceals a number. If a player decides to guess at a face's identity, that player peeks beneath the seventh door and finds the numbered entry in the answer booklet.
If she guessed correctly, she keeps this card and puts a new one in the now-vacant holder. If she's wrong her turn passes. But since she now knows the identity of the person on that card, she's barred from guessing at it again. A player's turn continues for as long as she makes correct guesses.
If all players incorrectly guess at the same card, all doors on that holder are closed and the card is replaced with a new one. It's also quite possible that faces will come up which, even when completely revealed, are utterly unknown to all players. Players can unanimously vote to replace such a card as above. But if one player dissents, the card stays until all dissenters have had another turn. If the face hasn't been identified by that time, it gets replaced anyway.
The goal of all this is to collect two cards of each color. This can take an excruciatingly long time, even with the aid of special spaces allowing multiple doors to open at once. When someone with the required assortment of cards lands on a FACE ID space, that player gets a chance to win the game.
Stay with me on this, folks. On the back of each card is a letter corresponding to one of the lettered doors. In this "Final Face Round", the letters on the back of a player's collected cards determine which doors are opened on a face. If all eight of your cards are Fs, then you'll only be able to open door F. If you've got one of each letter, then you'll get to see the entire face. Guess correctly and you win the game. Otherwise the game plods ever onward.
So what's my problem with the game? Face to Face crawls. It usually takes at least three open doors to be able to identify a face, often more. Opening those doors takes time. The layout of the board is such that a roll of two dice can leave you with as many as six possible moves. Merely identifying all the possibilities is a tedious, time-sucking process with the sole virtue of giving other players something to do when it's not their turn. What other players are supposed to be doing is studying the faces in the card holders. In practice, this is tough to accomplish. The card holders are set flat on the board, with shadows and glare conspiring to make it virtually impossible to see the faces from any position other than directly overhead. And because they're set on the four corners of the board, at least two card holders will be oriented upside-down from any given player's perspective. Ever tried to identify an upside-down face? A partially obscured upside-down face? Right.
We wound up passing the card holders around after a door is opened. But because the whole fun of the game is figuring out who's who, we wouldn't let the current player make a guess until everyone had a chance to peer at the newly-revealed face. The result? You guessed it-- more time.
We shortened the game by requiring only one card of each color, but even so the game still fails to thrill me. Which bums me out, because Face to Face sounded so promising. I'm not sure how to doctor this game to make it work. Perhaps it might work best as a kind of a bonus round for another trivia game. You could merge Face to Face with Trivial Pursuit. Number the doors 1 to 6. Each player gets her own card holder, and whenever you get a question right you roll a die and open the corresponding door. You could then roll again or take a guess at your card. If you guess correctly, take a Trivial Pursuit wedge of your choice, put a new face in your card holder, and continue your turn. If you're wrong, your turn ends. Another player would check your guess in the booklet, so you could keep guessing until you get it right. Earn a wedge on the Trivial Pursuit game board, and you could elect to exchange your picture card for a new one. After earning six wedges you must enter the hub and try each question on a card. Every right answer earns you one open door on a new face card. Guess the face and you win the game.
Hmm... that actually sounds workable-- I'll have to try it soon. But as a self-contained game, Face to Face falls flat on its.... aw, you know.