Just One: Review
I'm not normally a big fan of party games, but everyone has their weaknesses. Just One is ... just one such weakness. In this party game, you're trying to collectively help one player arrive at a word that they need to guess, making this a rare cooperative party game.
How do you do it? All other players write just one word (hence the name) on the included markerboards and then reveal them to each other, erasing the words that match each other. Once you're ready, the guesser opens their eyes and looks to see the clues. If they guess the word, you get a point! If they're wrong, you lose two, and if they pass, you lose one. You can kind of play until you're done.
It's a neat little party game, primarily because it takes a lot of things I like and streamlines out a lot of things that I don't. For one, it's effectively drop-in participation; you can leave the game at any time without much impact (or join, after someone's guessed). This alone makes it pretty ideal for parties. There's also the cooperation element; everyone wins or loses together, so that's always a nice thing to have at a party. The major place where this shines, though, is the tension it creates at the table. Players are genuinely unsure if they should write the obvious thing or the clever thing.
Sure, DENTIST and DRILL are great clues if you think writing CAVITY is too obvious for TEETH, but ... CAVITY is still a pretty legitimate guess from those clues, which makes things a bit complicated. It gets a bit worse when some of the words are arbitrarily more difficult, like squib or cinema, so you may want to house-rule out some words, which might be a bit irritating for some players.
I will say that, hilariously, this game often leads to some pretty great inside jokes, which is always great to have for a party. My verdict on this one is pretty positive, being real. If you like quick games, this is a good one. If you like word games, this is a good one. If you like cooperative games, this is a good one. Really, across the board, if you're looking for a solid entry in the party game space, or you're trying to wean your group off of Codenames, this game might just be the one you need!
You can order the game on Amazon and we’ll get a minor kickback if you do!
Eric Yurko
Eric is the primary reviewer and photographer for his board game review website, What's Eric Playing?. He generally enjoys light, cooperative, and dexterity games, and in his free time he's watching Black Panther or working his actual job as a Software Engineer.