UNO Teams is a surprisingly fun riff on the classic card game

While we’ve been covering more tabletop content on Checkpoint Gaming recently, I certainly didn’t have “gushing over a new way to play UNO” on my 2025 Bingo card. But, here we are. UNO Teams is a fun and exciting way to play the classic card game, with simple twists making it into an even more successful party experience.

The core foundation of what makes UNO a success remains unchanged; if you go out, by using all of your cards via matching colours, numbers or symbols, you win. Except, in UNO Teams, you’re playing in teams of 2, and your teammate opposite you needs to go out as well, for you to be successful. You’ll take half the cards from their hand if they’re not doing as well as you are, so the key is trying to work together as much as possible to make sure you can both go out at the same time.

Classic rules still apply; you have to yell ‘UNO!’ when you’re down to one card, and if your opposition beats you to it, you draw some more. It’s still satisfying and endlessly funny when you play cards that force your opponents to draw more or skip their turn completely. But there are some neat new additions to the formula that make UNO Teams slightly more complex.

Firstly, there are special cards, including Wild Team Draw 4, where both members of an opposing team have to draw 2 cards each. Then, Wild Team Play requires you to guess a colour that your partner has in their hand, skipping straight to them. If you get it right, they play it; if not, you’ll get a penalty of drawing two cards yourself.

UNO Teams doesn’t necessarily need you to be a mind-reader, though. The deck is full of cards that have a “pass” symbol on them, and whenever you play one of those, you’ll swap a card of your choice with your teammate. This means you can load them up with powerful cards – or, set them up with a colour that you know will help them on their turn. As a bonus, it takes some of the guesswork out of the Wild Team Play, if you have one handy.

This simple act of trading cards regularly with your teammate adds a surprising layer of depth to UNO, a game that has been around for over 50 years. It allows for smart clutch plays, where you set up your partner with just the right card to mess up your opposition, and the satisfaction – and thrill – of going out together and winning the match still excites. The group I played with were seasoned board gamers, known for playing epic campaigns and complicated, multi-hour tabletop battles that take all night. Yet, the simplicity and fun of UNO Teams still holds up extremely well. We played 2v2, but it allows for up to four teams, which would likely prove even more chaotic.

At the end of the day, it’s still UNO, so your mileage may vary depending on your love of the card game itself. But, there is something always a little bit satisfying about pulling out a classic, where everybody knows the core rules and can jump right in to have a laugh.

UNO Teams is available now in all good retailers.

A copy of UNO Teams was provided to Checkpoint Gaming for the purpose of this coverage.