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The dark is settling in, and all the wacky neighbourhood characters are out there hiding in plain sight. You and your friends grab your flashlights and set off into the night, trying to spot them before bedtime strikes. Just don’t lose track of time, or you might find yourself caught sneaking around after curfew…
Spotlight is a cooperative search-and-find game that feels a bit like a lively game of “Where’s Wally”, but with pirates eating popcorn and unicorns floating about in hard hats. Let’s take a look.
👥 1-5 players, ages 6+
⌛ Playing time: 15 minutes
📝 Designers: Hjalmar Hach & Lorenzo Silva
🎨 Artwork: Giulia Ghigini
🏢 Publisher: Horrible Guild (review copy provided)
Gameplay Overview
In Spotlight, everyone takes a neighbourhood board and a little flashlight. Your task sounds simple enough: find the characters and objects shown on the search card.
As soon as the timer starts, everyone dives into their board, shining their light around and silently counting how many of the right figures they can spot. Once the sand runs out, you lock in your guess by setting your dial to the number you counted, keeping it hidden from the others. No cheating, even if you are convinced you saw an extra ninja somewhere.
When everyone is ready, you all reveal your dials at the same time and flip the search card. The back of the card shows the correct number. If you counted fewer or exactly the right amount, you move forward the number of spaces shown by the stars on your dial. Spot them all perfectly? You even get a little bonus step. But if your imagination ran wild and you counted too many, you don’t move at all. That unicorn you thought you saw? Sadly, it was just a badly parked car.
After each round, the moon token moves forward. It takes the steps shown on the card, plus whatever the moon die gives you. If you happen to roll a battery symbol instead of more moons, your flashlight loses a bit of power, and next round you’ll be working with a smaller beam of light. Good luck with that.
If the moon ever passes one of the players on the track, that player jumps back ahead of the moon but the team loses a lighting token. Run out of tokens, and your team loses the game. No pressure.
The game ends after five cards. Your final score depends on how far ahead of the moon the last player managed to stay. Let’s hope someone didn’t spend too much time admiring the pirates in the candy shop.
Our Experience
One of the things that makes Spotlight so enjoyable is how each neighbourhood has its own character. One game you might find yourself at a busy carnival, the next you are digging through the chaos of a cinema. And it is exactly the sort of chaos you want: mummies paddling boats, unicorns flying about in popcorn storms, pirates operating road construction equipment. You can’t help but smile while frantically searching.
There is a good amount of variety too. With sixty different search cards and five neighbourhood boards, you won’t be running out of scenes to explore any time soon. Since only five cards are used per game, there is still plenty left unseen after a few rounds.
If you want to make things a bit more difficult, the free timer app allows you to shorten the round time to just thirty seconds. Or, if you enjoy the feeling of panic setting in, you can move the moon faster after every round. A little cruelty between friends is healthy, right?
If you prefer a bit more direct competition, you can drop the moon altogether and play competitively. In this version, whoever is furthest along after five rounds wins. Although, the leader has to use a flashlight with a dying battery in the next round, which feels nicely unfair.
For players who have memorised the boards a little too well, there is the quadrant variant. You randomly cover one quarter of your board and are not allowed to search there. It really forces you to rely on memory and guesswork, perfect for when you’ve played enough to start spotting characters in your sleep.
Final Thoughts
Spotlight is a light and cheerful game that does exactly what it promises. It evokes that familiar “Where’s Wally” feeling, and it’s easy to get distracted just laughing at the silly scenes rather than actually counting. But that’s all part of the charm.
Of course, if you prefer deep, strategic games, Spotlight might feel a bit too breezy after a while. There is no grand master plan here, just a flashlight, a lot of funny characters, and the constant worry that you missed an obvious mummy paddling past. Still, as a quick, casual game that you can play with just about anyone, it really shines. Now if you’ll excuse us, we think we just spotted a ninja stealing popcorn again. Or maybe it was a duck this time?
📝 We received a copy of Spotlight from Horrible Guild.
