Game Review: Uno Spin

Mattel, $17.99

Uno spin is the latest twist on Uno, an old classic. If you have never played Uno, before you continue reading put the paper down, go out and buy Uno, play a few games, and then come back to the paper. I’ll wait...

Good. Now that we’ve taken care of that, let’s talk about Uno Spin. (Now I know there are some of you out there who were too stubborn or lazy to follow the instructions above, and it’s just not my fault if you don’t get much out of the rest of the review!)

Uno spin is just like regular Uno with one major difference – that would be the large spinner from which the game gets its name. It plays just like Uno except that some cards have a “spinner” background. When one of these cards is played, the next player spins the wheel instead of taking a normal turn. Then a special action is taken as a result of the spin, and play continues.

The special spinner actions are: “Almost Uno” - discard all but 2 cards; “Discard Number” - discard all cards of the same number; “Discard Color” - discard all cards of the same color; “Draw Red” - draw until you get a red card or wild card; “Draw Blue”-– the effect of this card is intuitively obvious to the casual observer and is left as an exercise for the student; “Trade Hands” - all players pass off all of their cards to the player on their left; “Show Hand” - show your hand to all the other players; “War” - all players show their highest card, and the player with the highest card wins - in cases of ties, repeat until there is a winner; “Uno Spin” - the first player to say “UNO Spin” (note that it doesn’t say ‘shout’, but that’s usually what winds up happening) discards one card.

The spinner is about the size of a dinner plate and is easy to operate and read. It includes places in the center for the draw and discard piles. Everything is colorful and seems to be high quality.

My only beef with the game (and if you’ve been reading my reviews, you’ll know this is somewhat important to me) is that it doesn’t store well. The box wasn’t really made for storage, although we have managed to use it for that. If you didn’t save the box or don’t have enough patience to coax the parts back into the plastic insert, then you have the spinner to store as well as a deck of cards. I recommend keeping the box and having enough patience.

There you have it. You now know all there is to know about UNO spin. It’s easy and fun for the whole family. There aren’t a large number of games that are easy enough for the young ones to play (and be competitive) while still being fun and interesting for the adults. This is one of those games. If you like UNO and its other variants, you’ll like UNO Spin.

The game’s retail price is set at $17.99, but we’ve found it advertised for as little as $11, which is a good value.