Review of Change Up

By Jorge Zhang

November 27th, 2019

Introduction:

Change Up was an interesting game for us to review as it is a memory game. People in our club ended up liking the game overall- with 5 people voting it as a decent game in our anonymous poll, with no downvotes.

Rules

In Change Up, players take turns playing cards from their hand until everyone has used all the cards in their hand. At the start of the game, the 5 point cards (0-4) are placed face-down in a row. In addition, one player is given the “Your Pick” card, and gets to be the starting player. Card effects can be wacky and powerful- allowing you to draw cards, swap hands with opponents, or disrupt the hands of your opponents. The cards that make Change Up shine, however, are the cards that let you switch around the order of 2 different point cards. Each of these cards have different conditions, such as one that forces you to swap two adjacent cards. You might think that it would be extremely easy to remember which cards are where, but it is actually quite challenging because of how fast-paced the game is. It would take an incredible amount of memory and attention for someone to remember the location of each point card accurately after a round. Sure, you could try to focus on where the “4” card was placed, but at the end of the round, it is the player with the “Your Pick” card that gets to choose the first card. Yet, you never truly know who will end up with the “Your Pick” card, because there are a whole host of effects that affect who gets the card. To maximize your score, you have to choose which point card to focus on, while simultaneously trying to focus on obtaining the “You Pick” card. These decisions form the crux of the delightful memory game, Change Up.

Thoughts

Change Up was admittedly difficult to get to the table, and I wonder if some of that has to do with the art. It would be interesting to see if Change Up could be themed differently to better target an audience who is interested in memory games. Once we started playing, Change Up revealed itself to be a pleasant surprise. The illustrations on every card made it extremely easy to learn the rules and start playing in only a couple of minutes. In addition, the rounds are quite fast, and the flexible player count (2-5) makes Change Up a great and unique filler game. I personally thought that the higher player counts better- just because at a low player count it was less challenging to keep track of the point cards that you wanted to keep track of.

“If you are looking for a simple — yet surprisingly challenging — memory game, Change Up should be near the top of your list.”

Jorge Zhang

The Kickstarter for Change Up was successful, and Change Up will soon enter distribution through Amazon. If you want to know when that happens, you can sign up for their email list here: https://mailchi.mp/2df7bd7327bd/famineentertainment

For more information on Change Up, be sure to check out the Kickstarter page here:

What is your favorite memory game? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for reading as always!