Abraca Who?

• Designer: Gary Kim
• Publisher: Korea Board Games
• Players: 3-6
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Abraca Who?, players are guests at a haunted house party who have been cursed by a ghost, causing them to lose their sense of identity. To lift the curse, you must navigate the chaos and collect mysterious stones while trying to figure out who you are.

On your turn, you either Investigate by naming your hidden card to trigger powerful abilities or Duel an opponent to deal damage based on your card’s power. Since you can only see everyone’s card but your own, you must use deduction and the growing pool of revealed cards to stay alive.

The game ends instantly when a player collects 7 mysterious stones, earned by winning duels, successfully investigating, or being the last survivor of a round.

Players start by getting a set of reference cards and a health dial, set to 5.  The deck of 21 Identity cards is shuffled and each player draws a card – but faces it away from themselves so that everyone else can see the identity.

On a turn, the active player must take one of two actions: Investigate or Duel.

Investigate – trying to guess their own identity, the player announces one of the six identities and then checks their card.  If they are right, they get to activate the investigate effect of their card.  If they fail, they take one damage.  Either way, the identity card is discarded and a new one is drawn.

Duel – the player chooses any other player and challenges them to a duel.  The duel can be refused. If so, the refusing player immediately must take an Investigate action and resolve it.  If the duel is accepted, both players reveal their card, and the player with the lower number generally takes damage equal to the difference between the two cards.  There are a few special cases, such as the 1 always winning over the 6 which could affect the outcome.  If there is a tie, both players take 1 damage.  After a duel, each player discards their identity and draws a new one.  All discards are arranged face up on the table. 

Players can be eliminated from the round via a card effect or when their health drops to zero.  Either way, discard your identity face up and the eliminated player can rejoin the game in the next round.  A round ends when all players but one are eliminated or when the deck runs out of cards.  Players remaining alive at the end of a round will gain stones.

The game is won when someone has 7 or more stones.  This happens immediately.  If multiple players tie for the most stones at this moment, they share the victory.

My thoughts on the game

Ten years ago, we played Abracada What? https://opinionatedgamers.com/2015/06/08/dale-yu-review-of-abracada-what/  That game also used the conceit of not knowing the identity of your own pieces while being able to see everyone else’s… This new game takes that familiar concept and puts it into a card game – which feels a little like Love Letter, but obviously different as you don’t know what card you have!

There isn’t much to the rules – which is nice.  The game makes players try to deduce what card they have – though there isn’t too much room for this, usually only being able to note when you’re not chosen in a duel  (telling you that your number is likely larger than whatever number was chosen).   The ability of the 1 to defeat the 6 and the 2 to defeat the 5 do throw a little wrench into the deduction works, and the players should always keep that in mind as well.

The help cards are nice as each player has a set and therefore can refer to them without giving anything away to their opponents.   Each particular round doesn’t last very long as it seems like most turns end in someone taking damage or being eliminated!  The goal is to just hang on longer than anyone else in the quest to get the 7th mysterious stone.   You can try to deduce what you’ve got to try to win a duel or you can go out on a limb and just guess at what your card is in order to get its beneficial action.  

Abraca Who? requires players to use their brain to try to figure out what card they have in front of them while leaving plenty of room for luck as well to sway the proceedings.  

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral.
• Not for me…