Snow White and the Eleven Dwarves

• Designer: Chok Sien Hiew
• Publisher: Cili Padi games
• Players: 7-18
• Age: 7+
• Time: 20 minutes

Living with a clan of Dwarfs can be quite an adventure. They’re hardworking and dedicated, but their tendency for messiness and love for food fights can make things challenging. Despite these quirks, they have hearts brimming with kindness and a wickedly delightful sense of humour. When it comes to hide-and-seek, their version is absolutely hilarious and bound to leave you in stitches.

Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs is a game for 7 to 18 players, and is perfect for parties and family gatherings. It is a team deduction game, with Snow White on one side, and the Dwarfs on the other. Dwarf identities are secret, and Snow White needs to find the Dwarf named Happy. The Dwarfs work together to figure out who among them has overslept and is late for work.

The game is set up by pulling out the Snow White cards and one numbered dwarf per player.  Snow White and Happy are set aside for a minute, the rest are shuffled and then one of those cards is placed face down on the table – this is “Sleepy”.  Now, shuffle in Snow White and Happy, and then give one secretly to each player; this card determines their role for the game.  Snow White reveals her card so that everyone knows who she is.  All the other players place their Dwarf card on the table so that the white border points at the Sleepy card.

In this game, Snow White never takes a turn, but she does get to decide which Dwarf takes a turn. The chosen Dwarf starts their turn by rotating their card 180 degrees and then is allowed to look at the face down card of any other dwarf.  Each dwarf only takes a SINGLE turn in the game.  

The dwarves can freely discuss during the game but they are never allowed to state the number of their card or any card they have looked at.  They can, however, make statements like “our cards add up to 5”, “my card is a multiple of yours”.  You cannot make any statement that would definitively identify a card.  All conversation is in the open so Snow White can hear everything as well.  Interestingly, there is no obligation to tell the truth.  After a Dwarf has taken a turn, then Snow White chooses a different Dwarf (who has not already had a turn) to go.

At any point, any player can state that they want to “solve” the game.  The Dwarves are trying to identify the number of the Sleepy card.  Snow White is trying to identify which Dwarf has Happy, the card with the number 1.  If the player correctly finds their target card, they win.  If they guess wrong, the other team wins.

There are a number of variants in the rules that add more cards and characters to make the game a bit more complicated.  They can be played individually or can be combined with each other for a mega game.

My thoughts on the game

Well, social deduction games aren’t really my thing, and luckily, this isn’t one of those.  It’s more of a regular deduction game, though bluffing/lying can be a part of the strategy here.  There are some super interesting clues that can be given by the dwarves to give them information while keeping Snow White in the dark.  The big thing to remember is that the two sides are seeking different information.  Snow White only wants to know where Happy (the 1) is.  So any clue that eliminates multiple cards from her consideration are super useful to her.

I played this a number of times at the Gathering of Friends with varying groups of gamers – and it went over really well with the mathy/computery people and less so with other folks.  There is A LOT of mental calculation needed for the game, and I would definitely recommend some sort of note taking mechanism.  Our first game was played using memory alone, and man, that was a lot of work, and plenty of repeated questions to get stuff straight.  Things went much smoother with a small piece of paper to keep my hints/equations written down.

Depending on the crowd, the level of clues can be tough.  Simple ones such as “our two cards sum to 6” or “our cards are consecutive in value”.  Harder ones could be “our numbers add together to be a prime”.  The clues mean different things to different players because each dwarf on their active turn gets to look at a card.  Thus, knowing the identity of a particular card can help you chain together multiple clues.

It can be a bit frustrating if you’re one of the last dwarves picked to go as it’s sometimes hard to figure out the clues only knowing your own card.  We did learn that the dwarves can help themselves out by looking at cards from players who haven’t yet gone.  In this way, the still-to-be activated player might be able to figure out the identity of the card of the player who looked at theirs – by working backwards through whatever clue was given.

It did feel like Snow White had a harder time winning than the dwarves so far – but I still don’t have that many plays of the game; and lady luck may have just chosen people who weren’t suited for the task!  (Just kidding….)  That being said, this may be the only game in my collection that handles the player counts of 7 to 18; though I have only played with 7 and 8 players so far.  It is a nice game that can include a high number of players – the other game I had at the Gathering that could also handle 8 was Now!    It’s super small, and probably sticks around just in case a game is needed for a filler for that higher player count.  Our games have taken 10-20 minutes, and honestly, that’s about all that anyone that played would have wanted the game to last.  Yes, it’s a filler, but there is a fair bit of mathematical and logic calculation to be done.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Joe Huber (2 plays): I am quite concerned about the possibility that Snow White has – against competent  opponents – an impossible task.  I’m not certain it is, but I’m not sure I want to spend the time necessary to convince myself it is, either.  Now, having said that, this game is fun for a play or two even if there is an issue – but it’s not a game I’ll seek out more plays of.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

I love it!

I like it. Dale Y

Neutral. Joe H.

Not for me…