It’s six of the zombies and half a dozen of the aliens in this fast paced set collection card game! It’s time to play The Six.

👥 2 to 6 players
⌛ 12 to 20 minutes
🧠 8 years+

Gameplay overview:

Playing The Six is super simple! The deck is made up of 6 different characters and actions. At the start of the game, each player is dealt a hand of 6 cards. On your turn, draw 2 additional cards, then play an action card from your hand and do what it says. Action cards do a variety of things, from drawing more cards, to stealing cards from other players or forcing them to discard. There are also Deflect cards, which you can use to redirect an action aimed at you to another player. And you can Deflect a Deflect, and Deflect a Deflecting Deflect…

Once you’ve finished your action, discard back down to 6 cards (if you need to). If you can’t or don’t want to play an action card, you can just discard down to 6 and end your turn. If at any point in the game you have less than 6 cards (like if another player steals from you), draw back up to 6 immediately. The first player to get 6 of the same character in their hand wins!

Our thoughts:

The Six is beautifully simple to learn, quick to teach, and a lot of lighthearted fun! It has that classic card game feel that we loved sharing with our family – and it brought a lot of laughs, chaos and fun. What makes The Six work so well is the challenges around managing your hand. You need a set of 6 to win, but your hand limit is also 6, so you have to make some tricky decisions on what to keep and what to discard.

You need a set of 6 to win, but your hand limit is also 6, so you have to make some tricky decisions on what to keep and what to discard.

There is potential for a game of The Six to drag on a little bit too long if the draw is unlucky and everyone keeps sabotaging one another. But in our experience that didn’t happen very often – to give you an idea we played a lot of games and only had to reshuffle the discard in a couple of them.

The choice to design the characters as cute lil’ spooks is going to appeal to many, though not everyone. I personally like them and the aliens are my fave! Each character card is doing something slightly different, which adds a nice touch of variety to the deck – although the dabbing is a bit cringe! We also liked the two-tone colours.

One niggle was the readability design of the character cards. The character names are written down the sides of the cards that get covered up when you have them in your hand, and some of the characters have overlapping colour schemes. This caused minor confusion from time to time (even though the confusion is temporary because the characters are obviously very different). 

It has that classic card game feel that we loved sharing with our family – and it brought a lot of laughs, chaos and fun.

The rules are on the back of the box, and we can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not – on one hand, you’re less likely to lose them, but on the other there’s finite space. The rules are detail-lite and currently missing some key rules and clarifications.

What we like:

• Quick to learn, quick to teach, quick to play.

• It’s lighthearted fun – a classic chaotic family game, with silliness and luck.

• The hand management feels particularly tight and is what makes this game work so well – so often you’re faced with a choice of what to discard, or whether to stick with one character or start pursuing another.

• The characters are cute (except the dabbing ha!) – perfect for spooky lovers.

• It worked well at 2 players, and is probably best at 3-4. We didn’t get a chance to play it at 6 players – we’re pretty certain it’ll be more chaotic, which might be fun or might drag the game out.

Considerations:

• Minor design choices of the character cards (names on the side of the cards, similar colours) can make them difficult to distinguish at first glance.

• The rules (on the back of the box) are missing some detail/clarity.

Final verdict:

Does it bring something innovative to this style of card game? Not necessarily. But The Six is a great family card game that’s easy to grasp and lots of fun to play. It’s the first game we’ve played in a while where we had a proper giggle with our families! The design is quirky, and we can see the gameplay and character designs appealing to families (including younger kids!) or people who enjoy cute spooky aesthetics.

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This game was kindly loaned by Play-It-Now via the UK Board Game Review Circle. All opinions are ours and our reviews are always honest.