“Play it forward!” Oh, how long I’ve longed to find a good excuse to use that wonderful pun “Play it Forward.” Sheer brilliance.
Which is a foretaste of what you fall heir to once you open your box of Sneaky Cards.
The box. Ah, yes. Black and sneaky looking, but in a cute kind of way. With a magnetic lid. Oh, how love magnetic lids. But wait, there’s more, there’s in fact, not even having started.
There are 54 cards, color-coded. At the bottom of each card, there’s a rectangle onto which is printed a unique code for that unique card that you’d be holding in your hand at the time. Beneath that there’s a URL: SNEAKYCARDS.COM. Remember that.
On the cards themselves are instructions that not only you, but also whoever receives the card must follow. Yes, I said “receive.” For in this game, if there were such a thing as winning, you would have given ALL your cards away, playing it, as it were, forward in deed.
Let me further instantiate:
Purple Code.
Mission Objective: Grow
Find a new favorite song
Discover a catchy tune you’ve never hard before and write the artist and title below. Then pass this card along to someone else.
Pink Code.
Mission Objective: Create
Hiaku, once written
Fill the world with endless joy
Create one yourself.
Write a hiaku on a piece of paper, and then give it to someone along with this card.
Code Blue
Mission Objectives: Engage
Start the wave in a food court or cafeteria
When you do: Give this card to a stranger who joined you.
You may want or need to direct the person to go to the SNEAKYCARDS.COM website, click on “track this card” and enter the code on the card. Because that is the gateway to a great deal of fun, including the frequently-updated Sneaky Cards global tracking map.
Warning: just sorting through the cards to determine which ones you’d most likely be willing to use is a bit like riffling through your psyche, if you know what I mean. You learn a lot about yourself when you discover that you are simply not ready to “Lie down in a public place until someone checks on you.”
Yes, yes, this is a brilliant, innovative, fun and often surprisingly instructive little game, that we can’t, for the time being, recommend highly enough.
Sneaky Cards is based on an original concept by Harry Lee. From Gamewright, for one or more players, age 12 and up.