Jenny Lester

If you are anything like me and my friends, you have spent the last year going through a cycle of being obsessed with a new game and then quickly becoming bored of it because you played it to death (because there is nothing else to do). 

The most recent game whose novelty has almost worn out is Codenames as hosted on Backyard.co. After about two months of playing it every week, it was starting its slow march towards the graveyard of abandoned games, joining Jackbox, Among Us, and many others. 

That was until we started to let things get weird. We came up with 3 house rules to change up the gameplay and keep it fresh and interesting. 

Lightning code

The problem

When we realised the most boring bit of the game was waiting for the Keeper to think up the clues, we decided to speed things up. On Backyard, it suggests 3 minutes per round, and the timer included in the game offers 90 seconds, but we thought those sounded overly generous.

The solution

Instead, we gave everyone 1 minute to look at all the cards at the start of a game.

Each turn from then on is 30 seconds long. 

Just 30 seconds for the keeper to give the clue AND for their team to guess.

If someone is dyslexic or blind then read the words out during the first minute (twice if they wanted them repeated). 

This sped up gameplay and led to riskier clues. It meant more games ended with accidentally selecting the black card, but it also meant games took around 5 minutes instead of 20, so it wasn’t as annoying to lose. It definitely upped the drama and the excitement during rounds.

In general, we found Codenames Pictures to be better for dyslexic players, but this can be harder for blind players. You also can’t play the Pictures version on Backyard, or on the Codenames official site. There is a DIY version here: https://codenames-pictures.dport.me/ and there are versions of it on Tabletop Simulator.

Code Big or Go Home

The problem

Another part of the game that was getting dull was keepers being too conservative in their clues. Each round they would offer a clue for 2 cards and leave it at that. And often the guessers would choose just one card per turn unless they were super certain. 

The solution

Instead, we decided that keepers should have to give a clue for 3 or more cards (until there are not enough left). 

The guessers then must choose at least 2 cards per round (until there are not enough left).

This led to some very vague and stretching clues and ensuing hilarity. 

It again led to quicker games as teams were more likely to accidentally select the black card which creates heightened drama and excitement.

Code Dixit

The Problem

We quickly got bored with the normal Codenames that uses a selection of words. We played Codename pictures for a while, but there are only a limited amount of pictures so we grew bored with this as well. The clues became a little repetitive which made the game a little too easy.  

The Solution

We replaced the words and picture cards with a set of cards from the game Dixit. These cards, if you haven’t seen them, are images of surreal fantasy art. 

It led to some really weird clues and outside the box thinking to try to link the cards without alluding to the other team’s card or the black card.

The added bizarre factor really held our attention and gave the game an extra dimension. 

Again, you can’t play Dixit on BackYard. You can play normal Dixit on Boiteajeux or Dixit’s own app. However, to create the card set up for playing Code Dixit you need to use TableTop Simulator or something similar (or wait until we’re allowed to game in person again!). 

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I hope you enjoy these rules variants and they add to your enjoyment of Codenames. I’d love to hear if you have any house rules to keep games from going stale!