Madhujith Venkatakrishna
India
Bangalore
Karnataka
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After a very long gap, I felt like penning down my thoughts about a game that I felt really good about playing. Not because of wonderful game board, colorful pieces,great depth, multiple routes to victory blah, blah.....etc.
But for a simple reason-        
Don't get me wrong. By no means am I telling this game is simple. But the idea, the thought behind this design, the rules of gameplay everything so simple for such a DEEP game (comon see the ratio  ..)
I don;t write reviews on components or detailed gameplay etc. as that is not what I'm good at. There are excellent reviews written by more experienced gamers on forums or wonderful videos available.
What I do though is just share my feelings and experiences about a game, which might give some perspective about a game.
Quickly I would like to comment that the components are awesome- sturdy, colorful and good (I'm sorry haven't seen the old version so can't compare the Stronghold version to the older ones). But this version is very good.
Now to the rules and Game play:
- Each player has a rack in front of them with 3 numbers on them
- Everyone can see all the racks but for their's
- Goal: Identify the numbers in their rack 3 times correctly and be the 1st one to do so to win
- How: Draw a question card from the 3 card stack and answer it based on what you see on the other racks
Now seriously this is it! (of course there are some small additional rules like you guess wrongly, you replace your tiles and a few more). But if you time it, you can finish explaining this game even to the most naive player in about 3-5 min!
Isn't that fantastic! Specially if you are a new gamer and want to get into it. Or even if you are an experienced gamer and itching to get on with a game ASAP?
Having said the easy part, now the not so easy part....well....this is not a complaint....far far away from it.
The game itself is hard, meaning cracking the code isn't cake walk, unless you are attentive and use good deductive reasoning. I own a few deductive reasoning games like Clue, Mystery of the Abbey, Mr. Jack,Lord of the Rings- Confrontation Deluxe edition, some social deduction games like Werewolves of Miller's Hollow, The Resistance etc.
Of all the games I would rate only Mystery of the Abbey more difficult than Code 777, but that comes with a price- the game itself has a serious learning curve and is not for everyone with the game length sometime stretching upto 120 min!
But Code 777 just blew me away with its accessibility and depth- 2 paradoxes in such a short time, say 60-75 min. I mean everyone can play this, from 1st time gamers to hard core gamers! According to me that makes this game a great game!
I know this game is on the top 700 games of all time, but surprised it is not rated higher, because personally it should be ranked way higher!
The fascinating aspect of this game is the way those questions are designed, it makes the game so interesting. Each question reveals just enough information to make to want the next question ever so quickly. All of us felt that these 23 questions make the game what it is......a masterpiece in game design!
You almost get a feeling of watching a gripping thriller unfold in front of you....But No Theme!! And it is this honesty with the game that I loved the most.
This game is not going to come an claim "Hey you are on a secret mission to crack a top secret code to save the world...blah blah". No pasted theme. Just simple plain- Guess the numbers man.
I think the adage- LESS IS MORE couldn't be more apt.
I feel really bad that I got to know about this game only late last year and got it like 3-4 weeks ago. Yes, I have played it only 2 times and may not have the experience to comment on the longevity etc. etc. But I fell in love with this game and fascinated by it so much that I thought I should just share my feelings about this great great game. I've played it with 3 and 4 people and loved both the games, but may be I'm jumping the gun too early, but hey, it is me and I loved both the games 
Just to add, I got so inspired by Robert Abbot that I ordered and got myself Confusion:Espionage and Deception in the Cold War immediately after playing this. I have read the rules and can't wait to play it over this weekend.
Something tells me that is going to be another big hit with me.
If someone is on the fence about this game, I would say think no further, just get this game. IMO a must have in every collection!
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