Picture Perfect

• Designer: Anthony Nouveau
• Publisher: Arcane Wonders, Corax
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Played with copy provided by Arcane Wonders

How do you take the perfect picture of a group of people if you only have one try? Each character has different wishes. Some want to be at the front of the picture; some want to stand next to another; and some really don’t want to be next to that one particular person by any means. Do your best to make everyone happy – even if you don’t actually know all the characters’ preferences…

In Picture Perfect, you need to arrange fourteen characters to take the perfect photograph. Each of them has three specific desires that you want to fulfill. Unfortunately, these desires are hidden in envelopes. During the game, the players try to take a look inside these envelopes to figure out how to place the characters correctly. To do so, they trade their information with others — or maybe try to hide it… Whoever earns the most points at the end of the game has fulfilled the most desires and becomes the master photographer.

To start the game, you must first fill each of the fourteen envelopes with three preference cards.  The envelopes are then distributed evenly amongst the players with the extra ones being placed in the center of the table.  Make a deck of exchange cards (the certain cards based on the player count), and each player takes a set of guest figures, decorations, a floor mat and a shield to hide everything behind.   On the floor mat, place the table and put all the decorations on the table.  For now, the figures stay off to the side.

The game is played over six rounds.  There are four steps to each round.

1] Look at the envelopes – players are allowed to open one envelope at a time, look at the cards inside and then move the figures behind their screen to try to meet the preferences of that person.  You can put things however you want; and you should do your best to remember the preferences as you will not get to look at the cards again.  At any point in the game, you can place your VIP card into an envelope.  At the end of the game, characters with VIP cards in their envelope will be scored an additional time for each VIP card in their envelope.

2] Draw an Exchange Card – draw the top card of the exchange deck and read the instructions

3] Exchange envelopes – now do the thing on the card you just read (yeah, this really doesn’t have to be its own step)

4] Pass the Starting Player reference card clockwise to set up for the next round.

At the end of the sixth round, there is a final placement phase.  At this time, you must make the final decisions on where to place things.  Each guest must be standing alone in one of the spaces on the floor mat, and they must be facing forward.  The rules tell you to take a picture of your layout with your cell phone and then you use this picture for scoring!

Then, it’s time for scoring – open one envelope at a time and score -3/1/3/6 points for 0/1/2/3 preferences met.  If you chose not to place that person at all, you score zero points (but avoid any penalties).  You can keep score on the track on the back of the player shield.  Remember to score multiple times for a character if VIP card(s) are in their envelope.

The player with the most points after all 14 envelopes are scored is the winner.  No tiebreaker is mentioned.

My thoughts on the game

This is a game that I’ve been meaning to play for awhile now – as it was released originally back in 2020.  I have been to a few conventions where I saw it in play, but as things often go, I ended up pulled in different directions, and I never managed to get it to the table.  The game has been re-released here in the US by Arcane Wonders, and I finally got a chance to play it.

In the game, you are trying to set up the fourteen different characters (I use that term loosely as one of the characters is a huge potted plant) for a photograph.  Each character has three randomly determined desires, and if you manage to get a hold of their envelope, you can see the cards that tell you what they want.  With 42 different rules floating around, it’s impossible to remember them all – but you do your best, and try to put people in the right places on the floor mat.  Heck, there are times when rules will directly contradict each other!

Though you play at the same table; the base game is a very solitaire activity.  There is not much interaction between the players other than the passing of envelopes during each round.  Much of the time is spent arranging and moving the figures behind your screen; muttering to yourself at the impossibility of managing all of the different rules.  That being said, there always seems to be a decent amount chatter at the table, so it doesn’t feel so lonely.

For me, a lot of the game comes down to what information I can keep secret (and remembering which envelopes I need to see myself)!  The way that the passing works, it is very unlikely that you’ll see all 14 envelopes during the course of the six rounds.  Additionally, with some skill/luck, you’ll be able to keep at least one envelope in your possession for the entire game.  This, of course, will make it very difficult for others to score well for that character…  If you slide your VIP card into that envelope as well, you can hopefully double up on that advantage.  The downside is – all of your opponents have the same possibility.

What has happened so far is that the large determinant of success in our games ends up being luck of the draw as far as the envelopes are concerned.  When it’s time to reveal the cards of the envelopes in the center of the table – hopefully that are envelopes that you haven’t seen yet but others have already had.  When you draw envelopes at random from your neighbor, hopefully you draw the one they were trying to keep secret (and hopefully no one draws the one from your hand that you were trying to keep secret).

As you place the figures into the photograph, you’ll have to eventually decide whether to include the characters that you know nothing about.  You might need them present to score the bonuses of other characters – but then you risk taking a negative 3 if you miss all of their cards – which, of course, you know nothing about!  Once you’ve played the game a few times, you’ll know generally what sorts of things are on the cards, and you can try to make educated guesses about what you think might be in that envelope that you’ve never seen…

The auction variant gives you more ways to see envelopes and adds a bit of strategy and interaction to the game. I’d definitely recommend checking that version out once you’re familiar with the game.  (You’ll need the other book for any details on that though).

More often than not, good old dumb luck will win the day for someone.  There’s always a cheer at the table when someone gets a nice +6 score (doubled) for a character they knew nothing about!  And it’s this sort of point swing that will often carry the day in Picture Perfect.

Rules – OK, I know this is my personal pet peeve – but man, I really don’t like rulebooks that are separate for no good reason.  Here, they give you a short 8 page “rulebook” which gives the barest outline of how to play, and then include all the rules in a 12 page “Photography guide”.  Sure, newbies maybe don’t need the rules to the Auction variant that comes at the start of the Photography guide, but the back 8 pages of the second booklet contain what I would consider are the actual rules to the game.  I guess I don’t learn games the way that companies are expecting me to learn them – as this is maybe the 5th or 6th ruleset I’ve found this year – but i just don’t know why you’d give incomplete rules to people and say, you can figure it out, and then when you have questions, refer to this other book…   In a recent game, I taught the rules only from the first book to see how it would go; the gamers in my group referred to the Photography guide no fewer than 7 times to answer questions.   To me, that’s a lot of questions that I’d like to have included in the main rules.  OK, rant over.

The components are nice. I like the tactile / visual experience of moving the characters around, setting them around the table or in little groups behind my screen.  Some of the cards could be worded better (we had lots of confusion about people not wanting other people to be seen; when it really means that A wants to block B).  

Picture Perfect is a nice little puzzle game.  Many people refer to it as a deduction game, but I think that’s a false statement.  You’re not deducing anything in the game; you’re just trying to apply the three rules per person and come up with placement of figures that will lead to the highest score.  No deductions necessary nor possible!  I’ve enjoyed it so far, and I am hoping to try the game with some of the expansions to see if it brings more interesting facets to this puzzle.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Ben B (6 Plays): We have played this at home with the kids. Its fun, most of the work is in the setup, and is good with all family oriented groups. My Euro-gamer group almost flipped the table when I played it with them. I got and played this based on Steph’s recommendation at a Gathering. I like it enough to recommend it when non-gamers come over. Its also fun to snap pictures with your phone.

Larry (1 play):  Yeah, Ben showed this to me and while I didn’t flip the table, it didn’t work for me at all.  

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Steph H
• I like it. Dale Y, Ben B
• Neutral.
• Not for me… Larry