Movie Dominoes

Published by Cinelinx Media, LLC  following a successful Kickstarter campaign, Cinelinx - A Card Game For People Who Love Movies is a light, movie trivia card game that essentially plays like a cross between classic Dominoes and Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Rather than asking questions about what you know about the movies—film titles, actors, genres, movies, directors, scenes, quotes, and characters—it asks you what you know about the movies and then make connections between them.

Designed for two to six players, aged thirteen plus, the game consists of two hundred and twenty-four cards. These are broken down into four rules cards, eighteen Directors cards, eighty-six Actors cards, sixty-two Movie cards, sixteen Double Feature cards, four Quotes cards, four Character cards, four Scene cards, and fourteen Genre cards, plus twelve Director’s Cut cards. Each of the game cards comes with two pieces of text on it. One indicates the type, for example, Movies or Actors, while the other gives the text to connect to. So, for example, a Movies card might be ‘Star Wars’, a Actors card might be ‘Morgan Freeman’, a Genre card might be ‘Science Fiction/Fantasy’, and a Directors card might be ‘Christopher Nolan’. All four sides of each card are marked by film reel halved. These are lined up to form the connections from one card to another.

The rules come on four cards. One of the four gives the rules, one a guide to making connections, one to card types, and one to game variations. The rules to Cinelinx are simple. One card is placed in the centre of the table, typically a Genre card and the Director cards, which allow a player do things like swap cards with another player or allow a player to play two cards. Each player receives a hand of ten cards. Then on his turn he plays a card from his hand, placing it down so that it forms a connection with a card on the table. So for example, with the ‘Horror/Thriller’ Genre card down on the table, a player might place the ‘Interview with the Vampire: Chronicles’ next to it, the ‘Kiefer Sutherland’ Actors card (because Flatliners is a horror movie), and so on. Play continues until one player has played all his cards.

If a player cannot place a card, he must draw two cards and miss a turn. Alternatively, a player can swap up three cards from his hand and miss two consecutive turns. A player’s choice of card and connection can also be challenged and if proven invalid, he loses a turn.

And that is that… Physically, the cards in Cinelinx are decent enough if slightly rough to the touch. The rules themselves are perhaps slightly succinctly done on the cards and they are also a bit too small read. This being a trivia style game and a movie buff is going to have a big advantage with Cinelinx. The Dominoes-style game play is probably a bit too simple for anything more than casual play and a bit too simple for anything more than repeated play, whilst its age limits means that it is not really a family game either. Cinelinx - A Card Game For People Who Love Movies is a simple game for movie buffs that is not quite worth a rerun.