Four years ago, Jeopardy host Ken Jennings and Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield teamed up to create Half Truth, a trivia game with a twist. I reviewed the game back then and gave it our GeekDad Approved seal of approval, so when the publisher reached out asking if I would take a look at the second incarnation of the game, I was excited to see what they might have done with it. Thankfully, it’s a worthy follow-up to the original.
Half Truth: Second Guess is a party game for 2-12 players, ages 12 and up, and takes about 30 minutes to play. It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of $20 for a copy of the game.
It’s important to note that Second Guess is a complete, stand-alone game. While the question cards can be mixed-and-matched with those from the original, you do not need to own Half Truth nor even to have played it in order to enjoy Second Guess.
Half Truth: Second Guess was designed by Ken Jennings and Richard Garfield, with additional design by Koni Garfield and Skaff Elias. It is being published by Nighthawk Games and Brieger Games, with graphic design by Brigette Indelicato.
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Note: Even though the game is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, the version I was sent appears to be a fully-finished version. As such, I do not expect the components to change much, if at all, when the game is finally released.
Inside the box, you’ll find:
As noted above, this is a finished game, and all of the components are are very high quality.
The cards are poker-sized, plastic-coated cards with very easy-to-read questions and guesses. These match exactly the design of the cards from the original game, so you can use cards from either game while playing. If you’ve played the original so much that you’re out of questions, then this game’s card could be used there as well.
The answer cards are smaller. The back of each has a bright, clear color to denote the team, and a symbol (triangle, hexagon, or diamond) to denote which cards belong ot which player. The other side of the card is marked with a single letter.
The cardboard dials are two pieces. They do have to be assembled, using that ubiquitous black interlocking piece that has become the standard way to do dials like this. I do wish that it was possible to lock them together tigher, but they aren’t so loose as to really create issues.
The question mat is basically a cardstock envelope with a slot to slide questions into.
The cardboard tokens.
None of the components are going to win any design awards, but for a game like this, simplicity should be the order of the day, and the game’s components do exactly what they need to do.
You can download a copy of the rulebook here.
The goal of the game is for your team to score the most points by correctly guessing the answers to questions.
Start by placing the cardboard question mat in the center of the table. Then, place a stack of question cards nearby. It’s not necessary to use the entire deck, nor do they need to be shuffled. The deck is shipped in four separate packages, so it’s possible to open only one of them at a time, and not open the next until you have played enough to work through all of them.
Divide players into 2-4 teams of roughly equal numbers. Each team picks a color, then each player takes a set of 6 matching answer cards of that color. (Note that this does set a hard limit of 12 total players, as each person really does need a set of those cards to play.
Each time takes the score dial of their color, set to START.
If you’re playing with the optional reminder rules, each team also takes a reminder token.
One player (it doesn’t matter who) takes the top question card from the deck and, being careful to not look at or reveal the back, slides it into the question mat. Someone should then read the question and the six answers out loud.
Each team should check their dial and see if there are any icons showing. If so, they need to let everyone know as those will impact this round. (This won’t happen for the first several rounds, and techincally these could be ignored without dramatically impacting the game.)
The game’s name comes from the fact that each question card has a topic at the top, and then six possible items that fit that topic. But, on each card, only three of the six answers are right, and the other three are red herrings. So, the ultimate goal in each round is to suss out which three are right and which three are made up.
Each player then selects between 1 and 3 answers that they think are correct for this question. There is a reward for more guesses, but there’s also a penalty for being wrong. To make a guess, each player takes the answer cards matching the answer or answers they think are right and placing them facedown in front of them. Everyone must make at least one guess every round, but each player can guess up to three answers per question.
Importantly, players on a team are not allowed to communicate about which answers they selected or why. They can, however, announce how many answers they picked. In other words, they cannot say, “Green is definitely right,” but they can say, “Oh, I think this question is easy. I’m guessing all three.”
Once everyone has made their guesses, someone (again, it doesn’t matter who) will take the question card out of the sleeve, flip it over, and slide it back it. The back side of the card reveals the right answers.
If any player got any wrong answers, they pick up all of their score cards and will not score this round.
If a team has at least one player who got at least one answer right, the team moves their score dial forward two spaces.
Then, the team with the most combined correct answers moves their dial one additional space.
Note that it does not matter how many players on a team get an answer correct. They only need for no one to get something wrong.
These steps are repeated until the game ends.
But wait … remember those icons? They change how the round is played. If any team has a green arrow icon showing at the start of the round, then the team with the most correct answers (regardless of which team is showing the icon) will move their dial two additional times. If a team’s icon is a red circle with an “x”, then all teams this round are trying to find the incorrect answers. In this case, anyone who guesses a correct answer is out of scoring for the round. If two or more teams have the same icon, the effect is not doubled, but if two or more times are showing different icons, all of the effects come into play.
The game ends when a team’s dial is showing the purple exclamation mark icon at the beginning of a round. When this happens, this is the last round. In this final round, scoring is different: teams move their dial two times for having one correct answer as a team, three for two correct answers, and four times for getting all three answers. The team with the most correct answer still moves one additional time as well. After this round, the team that advanced their dial the furthest wins.
Half Truth: Second Guess is GeekDad Approved!
Trivia games are often a hard sell, particularly in my family. How much fun the are can often depend on the makeup of the group. But like it’s predecessor, Half Truth: Second Guess solves a lot of those issues. Anyone who has ever taken a test will tell you that multiple-choice tests are generally going to be easier than open-ended questions, and the nature of this game makes every question multiple-choice. Plus, as the name implies, you basically have a 50/50 shot at getting things right.
The questions in this game cover such a broad range of topics that it also becomes less likely anyone will start to feel left out because their knowledge base doesn’t match up to the questions. Don’t know anything at all about Animal Crossing? That’s OK – you can still make a blind guess at one of the choices, and there’s a good chance the next card will be something you do know.
The game is also great because there’s a lot more of that certainty you know one of the answers … only to discover that no, actually you don’t.
Of course, all trivia games do suffer from two other common issues: there are only so-many cards, and questions can become outdated quickly. (Don’t believe me? Go ahead and blow the dust off that old copy of Trivial Pursuit and start reading the questions…) It would have been easy for Jennings and Garfield to just release booster packs with more questions, but instead, they decided to re-imagine the game as a whole. While the original game had everyone playing for themselves, the team nature of thise game makes for an entirely different experience. While teams can definitely be held back by particularly weak players, they aren’t guaranteed to lose because of that player, since the other players on the team still score. But at the same time, teams aren’t really helped all that much by particularly strong players, since it doesn’t really matter (until the very last round, at least) whether you get one, two, or three answers right. But at the same time, the scoring is well-tuned enough at there is still a reward for making those stretch guesses.
One of the really interesting idesa in the original game was the occasional round of “negative” guessing, where you have to intentionally get the wrong answers rather than the right ones. I was very glad to see that included here, but the fact that you can never be quite sure when they will come up makes for an interesing extra dynamic.
LIke the first game, Half Truth: Second Guess takes the age-old trivia genre and reimagines it in a truly unique way. It’s all but guaranteed to provide a fun half hour or so for your next game night, and is definitely a game worth backing on Kickstarter so that you can get it as soon as possible.
For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Half Truth: Second Guess Kickstarter page!
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
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