Catch Sketch / Doodly Quickly

• Designer: Chris Choi
• Publisher: Mandoo Games
• Players: 3-6
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15-20 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Mandoo Games

Each year, I get a care package from the great folks at Mandoo Games with some of their newest offerings. This year, 5 games arrived on my doorstep, and they arrived late on a Saturday afternoon.  We were just about to have some friends over, and it looked like a few of the games would be suitable for that casual event.

I looked one of the games up on BGG, and the description of this game is: “Catch Sketch is a speed drawing game. You have to draw images to explain a keyword as quick as possible. The active player will guess the keyword by looking at the images of the fastest player. But, if he makes a wrong guess, the chance to get a score will passed to the next fastest player. So be quick, but draw recognizable images to win.”

So, later that evening, I pulled it out and gave it a try.  The rules are a bit more complicated than the above paragraph, but not by much!  In each round, someone is the guesser.  They flip over the top card of the deck so that everyone but themselves can see it.  The cards have two words on them, and you can choose to show the easy or hard word based on the location of a yellow bar on the background of the card.

All players read the face up word, and then on a signal, they all start drawing.  When any player is finished, they cap their pen and then grab the lowest numbered token on the table. Continue until the next player finishes – they take the #2 token.  All other players also stop and they get the remaining tokens distributed randomly between them.

Now, the game moves into the guessing phase.  The player who grabbed the #1 token, i.e. the fastest drawer, now reveals their drawing.  The guesser now gets a single chance to say what the word is, and is allowed to look at all the revealed boards.  If the right word (or form of the word is said), the guesser and that player score.  If the guess is wrong, the #2 player now shows their board, and the guesser gets another try.  If the guess if correct, then the guesser and the #2 player score.  If not, move onto #3, etc.

Scoring goes as follows – if a correct answer is said, the guesser and the artist score:

Board #1 – 3 points each

Board #2 – 2 points each

Board #3 and later – 1 point each

If all the boards are revealed and no correct answer is given, no one scores points this round.  The next player clockwise becomes the guesser and the process is repeated.  Continue until either everyone has had 3 chances to be the guesser – or if you like, play until someone has scored 20 points.

For a light after-dinner game, this was a success.  We had some non-gamer friends over, and this was a nice diversion for part of the evening.  The rules are simple and everyone understood what to do in a few minutes.  One friend had a bit of a problem grokking the scoring details, but it really didn’t seem that hard, and honestly, everyone else was able to keep score for him.  There is an area dedicated at the top of your board to keep score – though we missed it in the first couple of rounds. Of course, once you see it, you can’t un-see it, and it’s perfectly placed.

The whiteboards wipe off quite easily with the eraser on the back of the pens, and the number tokens were surprisingly sturdy and chunky wood cylinders.  The words were mostly fair, though I will say that our group of all adults (forty- and fifty-somethings) ended up using the easy words by the second round.  Not that the hard words were overly difficult; but since the game is all about speed drawing, we found it more fun to have slightly easier words that promoted scribbling as fast as possible.  

I’m not 100% sure of the correct EN name for the game.  The title is translated on the box cover as Catch Sketch, though the rules say Doodly Quickly.  As far as the game components go, the words seem to translate just fine, though there are a couple of the “hard” words that really seem a bit harder than most.  The drawers may have to decide as a group to throw a word out if one of those oddball ones come up  (or, the owner can just go thru the deck and hide those cards under the  box insert)…

For a light party game, this fits the bill perfectly.  You can honestly play for as long as you like, though three times around the table felt just right for us.  I’m sure someone won the game, but this was more about the laughing at ridiculous art and bad guesses as it was about the points.  If you don’t already have a speed drawing party game, this would be a good find.

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor