Similo
Similo Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
RULES
Similo is a cooperative game: all players work together to identify the Secret Character using a series of Clues.
Get Ready!
Choose or randomly select one player to be the Clue Giver. The other players will be the Guessers. The Clue Giver shuffles the deck and places it face down on the table.
Then, the Clue Giver must:
- Draw 1 card and secretly look at it. This will be the Secret Character that must be found by the Guessers!
- Draw 11 more cards and shuffle the Secret Character with them. These will be the 12 Characters in this game.
- Place the 12 Characters on the table, face up, creating a 4x3 grid.
- Finally, the Clue Giver draws a hand of 5 cards from the deck. This will be their starting hand of Clues.
GAME ROUND
The game is played over 5 rounds; during each round the Clue Giver will play 1 Clue, then the Guessers will remove one or more Characters from the grid. If the Guessers remove the Secret Character, all players immediately lose. If they manage to remove every card except the Secret Character instead, all players win! Let’s see how to play!
1 - PLAY A NEW CLUE
The Clue Giver must play 1 Clue from their hand to help the Guessers identify the Secret Character. Clues can be played either vertically or horizontally:
Vertical Clues - characters on Clues played vertically have something SIMILAR to the Secret Character.
Horizontal Clues - characters on Clues played horizontally have something DIFFERENT from the Secret Character.
The Clue Giver cannot speak, make gestures, nor use any other method to communicate with the Guessers: they can only play Clues on the table.
Right after playing a Clue, the Clue Giver draws 1 card to refill their hand up to 5 cards.
The Clues that are played are not removed at the end of the round, and a new Clue will be added at the beginning of each round. They will all remain valid until the end of the game.
The similarities (or differences) between the Secret Character and the characters depicted on the Clues are only limited by the Clue Giver’s imagination: physical details, emotions, professions, ideas, and so on… it will be up to the Guessers to understand what the Clue Giver is trying to suggest!
2 - DISCUSS AND REMOVE CHARACTERS
The Guessers must now analyze the Clue that was played (horizontally or vertically) and discuss in order to remove cards they believe are NOT the Secret Character.
During the first round, Guessers must remove 1 card—from the 12 showing—which they believe is NOT the Secret Character, using the information the Clue Giver gave them.
If the Character removed by the Guessers is NOT the Secret Character, they continue to the next round and the Clue Giver plays another Clue. The Guessers must remove 2 Characters in the 2nd round, 3 Characters in the 3rd, and 4 Characters in the 4th. For the 5th round, only 2 Characters will be remaining. After the fifth Clue is played, the Guessers must remove 1 of the 2 remaining Characters. If the last Character remaining is the Secret Character, all players win!
Note that if the Guessers choose to remove the Secret Character at any point during the game, all players immediately lose!
HOW TO PLAY WITH DIFFERENT DECKS OF CARDS
There are different versions of SIMILO! If you have more than one, you can combine two different decks of cards to create new and interesting strategies!
Just choose two versions of SIMILO and use one as the Character deck (A) and the other as the Clue deck (B).
SETUP
The Clue Giver draws one card from the Character deck (deck A, for example: SIMILO: Fables) and secretly looks at it. This will be the Secret Character. Then they draw 11 more cards from the Character deck, shuffles those cards together, and places them all on the table, face up, creating a 4x3 grid. These will be the 12 Characters in this game.
Finally, the Clue Giver draws 5 cards from the Clue deck (deck B, for example: SIMILO: History). This will be their starting hand of Clues.
GAME ROUNDS
Follow the same rules used for a regular game with one deck, with the only exception that the Clue Giver can only use cards from the Clue deck (B) to play Clues and to refill their hand of cards.