Base price: $25.
3 – 9 players.
Play time: 20 – 30 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 1 

Full disclosure: A review copy of Caution Signs was provided by Wacky Wizard Games.

Even had a chance to play a party game this time around, which was pretty cool. The nice thing about party games is that they play pretty consistently; you’re not getting huge variance in how the game plays as much as you expect variance from the players themselves. This leads to my two favorite types of party games: Let’s Categorize Things and Drawing Games. I have a new one of each from Gen Con so expect to see the other soon. In the meantime, let’s check out Caution Signs!

In Caution Signs, players are probably trying to helpfully alert each other to a wide variety of problematic conditions on roads or otherwise, but the signs all got jumbled up! Each round, each player gets a CAUTION and a SIGNS card and combines them, then all players have 20 seconds to draw what’s described. After doing so, the CAUTION cards and the SIGNS cards are shuffled into two piles with two extra cards added to each and a Guesser tries to figure out which pair goes with which drawing. Let everyone be Guesser once or twice and tally points! Will you be able to make your signs clear?

Overall: 7 / 10

Overall, I think Caution Signs is cute! I enjoy how approachable it is, and I think the casually-messy “twenty seconds to draw something” works out pretty well across the board. People love drawing games (unless they can’t draw), but an incredibly short time limit is often the great equalizer for these types of games. Everyone struggles to draw something coherent with only 20 seconds to plan and execute, and that frequently leads to silly outcomes across the board. There are a lot of great games in this genre category as well, but Caution Signs does let its components and presentation do a lot of the heavy lifting for it, and I think that works well. Plus, some younger players are often into the whole “construction zone” thing, so that might be an extra draw.

There are a few places where the game struggles a bit, and that’s respectable as well. I think different markers, while a huge nitpick that’s really just manufacturing, would be nice. With speed drawing, thicker-tipped markers can sometimes lead to frustrating errors and the scoring can be tight enough with experienced players that you don’t want to feel like you could have done better with a thinner tip. The erasers also just smear the marker around, but that’s almost every dry-erase eraser I’ve used. Use rubbing alcohol instead; it’s leaps and bounds better. Also, at lower player counts you have a bit more per-round variance, which can occasionally be annoying. The game is at its most entertaining when it’s tense, and that tension usually comes when you have two very similar cards on the table (CLASSY vs. FANCY, for instance). If none of those come up and everyone’s okay at drawing, the game can feel a bit rote at times (just because everyone gets maximum points). I’d like to see either more complicated concepts (harder to draw) or more cards in play (more potential overlap) to balance that out, I think. As a result, the ideal player group for this skews a bit more family-weight than game night, though that’s not bad; I need more drawing games to play with my family, especially since you can only really use MonsDRAWsity cards once per group.

There are many good drawing games appealing to a variety of groups. I’ve always enjoyed Make the Difference challenging players to be subtle and pay attention and A Fake Artist Goes to New York letting you pretend like you know what you’re doing just like I do at my job. Caution Signs excels in environments where you’re going to try and communicate a lot with very little and laugh at your foibles. You do get some excellent combinations (and occasionally nonsensical ones, like FLEXIBLE DOLPHIN, which is also fun). I’d love to see more of those moments pop up; this game’s perfect for more cards and more chaos anyways. If you’re looking for a great introductory party game, you love construction themes, or you just want to draw a SMELLY PILOT or something, Caution Signs is a lot of fun! I’d recommend it.

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