Knee Jerk Kickstarter Preview

This post is not a review, but a preview of a game currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. Final art, rules, and components are subject to change.

I don't think there's anything I love more than sitting around with my friends and family and laughing. That is why I love games like Taboo and Balderdash. They don't is not much to those games, but they produce such hilarious and memorable moments that I simply can't get enough of them. 

Knee Jerk is a game similar to those two in a way. Players need only a deck of cards and about 10 seconds of rules explanation in order to play. 

The game is dead simple - the active player (host) deals 2 cards to the table, and 3 to her hand. She chooses one from her hand, and lines it up with the other 2 so that the green arrow of the first card points to the blue arrow of the second card, which points to the orange block of the third card (the one she chose from her hand). This orientation of the cards will create a randomized story prompt. 

After the host player reads the story prompt, the rest of the players begin offering up their versions of how the scene ends. The host then awards the player who answered first a point - in the form of the left-most card on the table. Play then continues with the host placing another card to the right. 

Knee Jerk is so simple, but so much fun. The crux of the game, however, relies on the players you've gathered together. I think that the rules are simple enough that anyone thinking about bringing this out with a group would already have a pretty good idea of whether or not it would go over well. But because the rules are so simple, it is also fairly easy to implement variants.

The game rules also suggest playing where the host awards the point for a story to the first answer given. While this rule certainly fosters a wide range of hilarious answers shouted out without thinking, I also think that having the host choose her favorite story for each round is also a lot of fun. The last game of Knee Jerk I played with a kind of a blend of the two, where the host of the round chose which rule variant she wanted to use. 

Knee Jerk is one of those party games that I love - it brings out a special kind of silliness in people that is just so much fun to be involved in. And just like the best party games, it is not only a blast to play, but it can also create discussions about where some of these ridiculous stories come from - either real or created. Knee Jerk is great party game - and an absolute steal at $10.

If Knee Jerk sounds good to you - go back on Kickstarter now!

Telestrations Review

Today's review is of a game that truly took me by surprise - Telestrations (which is available in either an 8-player or 12-player format, depending on how many friends you think you have).

Telestrations is really a very simple premise.  In fact, one of the reasons that I waited so long to try it is because, frankly, I probably felt like I was too good for it.  ("Oh?  That little party game?  Sure - you guys have fun with it."  Good thing I eventually got over that.)  So, Telestrations takes two classic games and smashes them together - the game of "telephone" (where you whisper something into someone else's ear, and they whisper to the next person, etc.) and Pictionary.  So, in Telestrations, each person starts with a booklet of dry erase pages, and writes something on the first page.  Then, they hand the book to the person next to them.  That person looks at the text, and they draw a picture of it - and hand the picture to the person next to them (that isn't the original person, obviously).  That person then writes down what they think the picture is representing, and pass the book.  Then I can continue typing this same thing, but ultimately, it just keeps going like this until it gets back to the original person.  That person then flips through the book, shows all of the other players the transformation of their term, and laughs.

You may now be thinking, "Wait, how is this a game?  You didn't tell me how to win!" And you would be right!  I actually view Telestrations as an activity more than a game - in fact, the rulebook even states: "Are you a winner?  Did you have fun?  Well, then you've won!"  And I agree with it.  However, if you must compete to enjoy things, there are also rules for how to make it competitive - give points for your favorite answers, etc.  Basically, very Apples to Apples style scoring rules.  However, you don't need any of that to have fun.

A Teddy Bear Confessional

So, what do I like about Telestrations?  I like writing something ridiculous down to see how my original statement transforms, and how people try to depict it.  For example, one of my favorite things that I've written down was "Runaround Sue" (a song from the 60's).  When I got my book back and flipped through the pages, I was pretty impressed with the (first) drawing I saw.  The first picture had a picture of someone running, a circle that was going around, and a picture of a sewer, indicating to drop off the "er."  (After all, how do you draw the name "Sue"?)  Unfortunately (ahem, as I intended) the next person wasn't quite able to figure out what the artist was going for, so they took it a completely different direction.  Another time, I wrote down "Code Monkey", and wound up with a Teddy Bear Confessional by the time that it got back to me.  Basically, watching how different people interpret different clues is really fun - and hilarious.

The next pro that I have for Telestrations is that the components are well made.  Ultimately, you could play Telestrations without owning the official box.  However, the published version provides you with materials to make it really easy to play for as long as you'd like.  The Dry Erase boards have plenty of room, while also being Dry Erase, and thus not wasting tons of paper.  Plus, the box includes different cards that you can use in case you struggle with coming up with ideas for what to write down.  So, though the game can be played without using the "official" version, it definitely is enhanced by using the tools that the official version provides you with.

Some people actually draw well, even when rushed!

So, were there any real problems (cons) that I found with Telestrations?  Well, first off, is people's preconceived notions of it - like my own.  You may have trouble getting strategy gamers to play Telestrations, because they will assume that they don't like it.  That's not really the game's fault, but it is definitely something to be aware of, as I have seen a lot of this bias against the game.

The next con that I found for Telestrations is that a lot of the fun is dependent on the creativity of the initial concepts.  For example, far too many people can draw a "good enough" fire hydrant.  So, if that is the initial clue, then you won't have the satisfaction of flipping through the pages and going, "how the heck did my clue turn into this??"  So, I highly recommend that your clues are more complex - perhaps song titles, or other compound concepts.

Overall, I give Telestrations an A+.  I realize that's not a score between 0-10, but as a nod to it being a party activity more than a competitive game, I felt like it deserved it's own scale.  Really, it's a lot of fun, and I'm glad to have a copy to take with my to future game nights!

If Telestrations sounds fun, you might also check out Rory's Story Cubes, Time's Up, and AttrAction.

I would like to thank USApoloy for providing me with a review copy of the Telestrations 12-player party pack.

Time's Up: Title Recall Review

Occasionally you stop playing a type of game.  Maybe it's because of friends, maybe it's because you grew tired of that style of game, maybe it's something else.  Then, you encounter a new game, and that genre that you had given up on suddenly becomes a regular part of your gaming experience. Time's Up: Title Recall has recently done that for me by making me reconsider how often I should be playing party games.

In Time's Up: Title Recall, each player starts the game with a handful of cards - each representing a song, TV show, movie, book, etc.  Of these cards, they select two to be discarded, and the rest of them go into a pile of 40 cards.  This pile represents the cards that you will play with each game.  Now, the game is played over three rounds.  In the first round, you can say anything, except any part of the name on the card, in order to get your teammates to guess the answer.  During this round, you cannot pass a card, and so if you encounter a difficult clue, you might get stuck for a bit.  Play alternates around the table until all of the cards have been guessed.  After this round, someone goes through all of the answers and reads them aloud.  In the second round, you use the same cards, but this time you only get one word in order to get your teammates to guess the answers.  (You can also act things out in any round.)  However, you can pass as often as you want.  But, your teammates only get a single guess on each card.  The final round works exactly like the second round, except you don't get a word - you must act out the answers.  Once all of the answers have been guessed in the final round, players tally up their scores, and whichever team has gotten the most answers wins the game!

Most of the components are cards and a timer

My first pro for Time's Up is that the game builds on itself.  The different aspects of the game can be fun independently - the first part of the game is similar to Taboo, and the last part of the game is charades.  These games are enjoyable enough that people will play them as standalone games.  However, Time's Up is very fun (and very fast paced) because you use the same cards repeatedly.  Sometimes a clue that is given in the first round will be acted out in the final round - and sometimes it isn't even relevant to the answer itself!  For example, in one game that I played, the answer was The Goonies.  Well, one of the actors in The Goonies also played Rudy.  So, some of the clues given in the first round mentioned this fact.  In the last round, the player was actually miming throwing a football as the clue for The Goonies!!  Something that would have been completely nonsensical unless you had also seen the first round of the game!

The next pro that I have for Time's Up is that it allows people to make fools of themselves, but completely willingly.  There are many party games that simply tell you to do something stupid.  I played one in which everyone was given a card to represent some weird quirk that they were supposed to act out - like whenever someone mentions a "key" to you, you yell about a dog, or something.  I don't like that kind of game.  (I am admittedly somewhat shy and easily grow self conscious.)  However, Time's Up does not instruct you on how to act like a fool, but since you are timed and only have acting available, your competitiveness will quite likely kick in and you will start acting out things that you would be terribly embarrassed about outside of the game!  (For example, one of the cards I've seen is the 40 Year Old Virgin.  I'm sure you can imagine some of the ways this has been acted out.)

My third pro for Time's Up is that it is (relatively) flexible with number of players.  Granted, there are a few numbers (like 7) that really don't work very well for it, as you can't divide easily into even teams.  However, it is a party game that can be fun with as few as 4 players, and can easily accommodate 12 - or more!  Granted, some people will prefer the smaller games, as they enjoy giving clues.  But, there are very few games that can be played with both small groups and large ones, while keeping everyone actively engaged - but Time's Up does this very well.

Better give clues fast!

My main con for Time's Up is that sometimes there will be cards placed in the deck that you know absolutely nothing about.  The Title Recall version of this is not quite as brutal when this happens - you can generally get your team to get the different pieces of the title, and then fit them together for the full answer.  However, I have played one game in which one of the answers was Achtung Baby.  I had never heard of Achtung Baby, and I still have no idea what it is.  Additionally, "achtung" is not a word in my vocabulary, and so you will never get me to guess this term.  So, when our team drew this card in the first round, we were basically stopped completely.  Granted, much of this is mitigated by the fact that you get to select which cards you play with at the start of the game - but people come from different backgrounds, and just because you are familiar with something does not mean that I am.

Overall, I give Time's Up: Title Recall a 9.5/10.  It has managed to get me to play a genre of games that I had basically given up on, and I have been amazed at how often I have wanted to play it over any of my more strategic options.

If you're looking for more party games, you might also read about Crappy Birthday, Say Anything, and The Resistance (which isn't a traditional party game).

I would like to thank R&R Games for providing me with a review copy of Time's Up: Title Recall.

Perudo (Liar's Dice) Review

One of my favorite party games that I'm glad to get to tell you about is Perudo (also know as "Liar's Dice").

In Perudo, each player starts with five dice and a cup (to keep their dice secret). Each round starts with all of the players rolling their dice. Whoever lost a die most recently (first round, just pick someone randomly) starts the round. They must bid how many dice they think have been rolled among all of the available dice. For example, they may bid "five 4's", which means that they think that there are at least five dice showing the number four among all of the players' dice. To add to the fun, one's (or ace's) are wild and count as any number. Now the next player must either increase the number on the die (and keep the number of dice at least the same), or they can increase the number of dice (so, in our previous example, both "five 5's" and "six 2's" are legal bids, but "four 6's" is not); or they can "call" the player before them, if they do not think that their bid is correct. Once someone is "called", all players reveal their dice. If the necessary dice were rolled, then whoever called them loses a die; otherwise, the person who made the bid loses a die. There are some other special rules when a single player gets down to one die, and for how to bid on ace's, but this is the bulk of the gameplay. Play continues like this until only one player has any dice left.

A beautiful Toys R Us version

The first thing that I love about Perudo is the secret element of the dice. Since any given player never has more than five dice, the players have to completely guess what dice are present. Yes, you can use statistics to guess how many of each die there should be, but statistics always lie to you in Perudo. Because of this, it's great fun to start the game by bidding that there are 10 or more of some number, when you really have no idea. But, with six players (30 dice), 10 is probably a safe bet!

The next thing that I like about Perudo is the mind games that you can play with people in the game. In a big game, your objective is simple - bid so high that the bid will not get back around to you, but just low enough that people will not call you! If I bid on something and five other people bid after me before I am forced to bid again, then this works out really well (after all, you can't lose a die unless you either call somebody or are called). However, the game can be just as fun when you have eliminated everybody but yourself and one opponent. It's a fun bluffing exercise to try to outwit your opponent when you know what dice you have rolled, he knows what he has, and you must still force his hand - and the less dice you each have, the better it gets. If we each have one die left, should I start by bidding "one 2", when I have a five, thinking that he won't call me? If I do, and he changes it to "one 3", should I call him thinking that he is using my same strategy?

The final aspect of Perudo that I like is the social nature of the game. Yes, Perudo requires strategy, but it's not such an all-brain encompassing strategy that you only focus on it, leaving no room for talking. Perudo has quite a lot of banter, laughing, and "ahhhhh!!!" moments (as your opponent outwitted you - or really did roll all five of his dice on the same number). The game is flat out fun to play (pro number four), and at the same time allows players to enjoy each other's company. (Plus, it can be scaled up to as many players as you want if you have extra dice lying around. Though I'd guess at some upper limit it stops being fun.)

Final pro - it can also be played by anyone! Perudo is very non-traditional gamer friendly.

With this, you can lie to anyone!

With all the positive aspects of Perudo, there are really only two things to mention that can be considered negative. First of all, Perudo is a filler game. I don't really envision people getting together specifically to play it. However, since it could also be thought of as a party game, it is a game that I can see people being able to play often (like.... you know.... at parties) - especially non-traditional gamers.

The other "con" (well, more "thing you should realize") is that there is player elimination in Perudo. Once you run out of dice, you are out of the game. However, since this game will probably be played at parties, this simply provides time to mingle, get a snack, go to the bathroom, or just chat with your other friends that were eliminated.

Overall, I give Perudo an 8.5/10. I love Perudo and think that everyone should play it. However, my (current) personal rule is that I reserve 9+ for games that I think people would get together specifically to play, which I don't think is the case for Perudo.

If you're looking for fun dice games, you might also want to look into Cookie Fu, Martian Dice, and Rory's Story Cubes.

Crappy Birthday Review

A new game that North Star Games has come out with (that they are marketing as something to bring to a party instead of a bottle of wine or case of soda) is Crappy Birthday.

If you've played Apples to Apples, then basically you already know how the game is played. Each player has five cards in his hand representing "really awful" birthday gifts (awfulness like beauty is apparently in the eye of the beholder). Players take turns being the person receiving a birthday present. Your job, as someone who apparently hates your friends, is to give them the worst gift imaginable. Do you happen to know that your friend hates heights? Then you should of course give him Skydiving sessions. Does he hate board games? (Then why is he playing?) Then you should of course give him (my personal favorite card) a Crappy Birthday Party (this card is awesome, because it is actually a picture of the people from North Star Games playing Crappy Birthday)! The person who is receiving the gifts then takes all of the cards, shuffles them up, and reveals them to all the players for everyone's amusement. Next, he picks which one is truly his most hated gift and whoever played that card receives a point. The first person to get three points is the winner (and you might be leery when receiving a present from them in the future)!

The first pro for Crappy Birthday is that it is designed to be amusing. Whereas with Apples to Apples (you're going to get a lot of comparisons to this game since they use the same mechanics) you are trying to get the best match, and thus you are supposed to play "seriously" (I always play the funniest one either way; and I rarely win), in Crappy Birthday you are actually playing what you think is the most atrocious - and these are much funnier. So, though Apples to Apples is marketed as a fun game with a lot of laughs, the rules to Crappy Birthday actually encourage this amusement and, in my opinion (which is the one that gets published since I'm the author of the blog) this makes the game much funnier.

The next thing that I liked about Crappy Birthday are the pictures on each card. This is probably the biggest difference to that other game that is named after Apples. In Crappy Birthday, each card has a picture of what this awful gift would look like. After all, what if you weren't really that imaginative and couldn't think up what a Hairless Cat would look like. They provide the picture to help you realize just how horrible of a gift that would be. I must say that some of my favorite pictures (aside from the Crappy Birthday Party mentioned earlier) are the "Decorative Urinal", the "Taxidermy Your Pet", and "A Llama Named Lloyd."

Unfortunately, there are also some cons to Crappy Birthday. Most notably (and ironically, since North Star Games is actually the company that fixed this con in Say Anything) is that if your cards aren't being picked, then you can quickly feel a bit left out of the game. This is a glaring problem to me in both this game and the Fruit game - after a few rounds of playing the card that you think is "perfect" and still not getting picked, it is pretty easy to start eagerly waiting for the game to be over. Say Anything fixed this by allowing you to bet on what answers you think would be picked so that you were always engaged, but I guess that North Star was trying for a simpler game that could more easily be brought and played as a party favor. I'm sad that they re-introduced this con by doing so, however.

The next con that I have for the game is that there are a lot of "horrible presents" that all of my friends would love. For example, I got this game at GenCon, and I played it with my friends who were with me at the convention. (If you read this and don't know what GenCon is, GenCon is a gigantic gaming convention currently held in Indianapolis. Also, since you apparently enjoy games but aren't insanely obsessed with them like me, please share my site with your friends - I like helping people find games that they will like. I think that there's a game out there for just about everyone. Anyway…) Cards like "Star Wars Collection," "Weeklong Renaissance Fair," and "Suit of Armor" aren't ever helpful to play. Everyone that I was playing with would have been very excited to receive any of those things. And so if you are unfortunate enough to draw too many of these wonderful "crappy" birthday presents, then you won't have a chance at winning. (I think the point of the game is to "have fun," but I am very competitive. It's ok, I'm nice to the people I play with while secretly hoping I crush them.) And, yes, I know that my friends are weird. I did start this paragraph by telling you that we were playing it at GenCon, though, so you should've expected that.

Overall, I give Crappy Birthday an 8.0/10. I debated a bit on this game and what I thought the score should be, especially because it's not especially innovative. However, I think the game is solid and, more specifically, I think that North Star really succeeded on their goal for the game - to make a game that you could inexpensively buy and bring to a party and know that you will have fun playing it with a group of friends. I don't think that they were worried with if you would be able to play it dozens of times - I think they were more concerned on whether you could get $15 of enjoyment out of it, and I think you can.

I would like to thank North Star Games for providing me with a review copy of Crappy Birthday.  In addition to being available at Amazon, Crappy Birthday will be available at Barnes & Noble starting September 2011.

Train of Thought Review

A game that I've been trying to find for about six months (since the designer was kind enough to point it out to me and I thought it looked intriguing) is Train of Thought.

In Train of Thought, players take turns playing as the "conductor". The conductor rolls a six-sided die and draws a card - this gives him a starting word (like "House"). From there, he draws the next card, which gives him his destination word (like "Experience"). Now, he uses the starting word along with two other words to attempt to get all of the other players to guess the destination word. If they don't get it on their first try, he can choose one of their words as his new starting word, and try again. Once you finally get them to guess the right word (this may be very quick, or may be an excruciatingly long time), you draw another card, and use your previous destination as the new start word. For each word that is correctly guessed, both the conductor and the person to guess the word get a point in the form of a card being played in front of them. You normally allow each player to be the conductor twice, and then whoever has the most cards is the winner!

The first thing that I like about Train of Thought is that it breaks my brain - and in a good way. Let's go ahead and admit this. My brain is incredibly analytical (some would say that I'm "overly analytical", but I prefer "super analytical", because then it sounds much more like a super power). And, yes, in case you didn't read between the lines, "super analytical" does equate to "software developer", which is what I currently do that actually pays "real" money (as opposed to blogging). With that, creative word games aren't necessarily something that come naturally to me. Train of Thought, specifically, challenges me to think in much different ways than games like Taboo, where I can keep babbling until someone figures out what in the world I'm saying.  I only get three words, one of which is provided for me (and normally irrelevant) - I better make them count!

The next pro is that the game can have some really neat connections to lead from one word to the next. This is, honestly, the best part of this game and what sets it apart from any other word games that I have played.  One of the games we played saw a connection from (I think) the word "weight" to the word "skin". The connection went something like "this covers weight"; which led to guesses of "clothes", "scale", and a few others. To which, the conductor (not me) cunningly replied "scale to dragon". Brilliant! Of course, scales to a dragon are their skin! When things like this occur in the game, it really helps you enjoy the game, and reminds you why you are playing it instead of any of the other multitude of choices in word party games that are available.

Unfortunately, when people choose not to play by the "spirit of the rules", the game still functions, but prevents you from experiencing the previous pro. The only real requirements of the game are that: first, you only have three words, and second, that you have to use a certain one. However, if your starting word is "Sunshine" and your destination word is "Shield", there's nothing to stop you from giving "Sunshine Captain America" as a clue. In fact, this is a pretty effective strategy, and if your goal is to win, there's no real incentive not to use it (people will catch on and disregard your first word). And I can't really point fingers here, because I have also found myself in a bind, unable to find a connection from one word to the next and thus defaulted to this strategy. I think the game would be more fun with a house rule that you are not allowed to do this - even if that requires you to all agree that you don't even keep score (those of us who are a combination of hyper-competitive and really bad at this game would probably not agree to this house rule otherwise).

The next con is in the limited number of cards included in the game. Whereas there are 200 cards, and each card has 6 different words on it, we wound up reusing some of the same words the third time that we played the game. Now, this was a combination of playing with psychologists (they are great at stringing words together to allow people to figure out what they're thinking and thus scoring lots of point - and going through lots of cards) and some similar dice rolls (we never rolled a one - in either game; we rolled a lot of five's), which led to the duplication. However, it still would have been better to have more cards available to keep the game fresh, without having to give it more down time between games (so that we can forget all the words).

Overall, I give Train of Thought an 8.5/10. I eagerly anticipated trying this game for several months, and it didn't disappoint. I think that this is a new take on word games, and I look forward to getting to play it more often. Unfortunately, it will only be once every few weeks, at the most, to make sure that we don't remember all of the words.

I would like to thank Tasty Minstrel Games for providing a copy of Train of Thought for me to try. I would also like to thank Jay Cormier (the designer of Train of Thought) for pointing the game out to me. If you're interested in following his adventure in getting games published, check out his blog Inspiration to Publication.

Say Anything Review

Another party game that I have played recently (yes, I've played way more of these recently than I normally do) was Say Anything.

In Say Anything (also known as "what Apples to Apples wishes it could be"), players take turns as the moderator. The moderator selects the top card and then picks one of the 6 questions on the card for the other players to supply their best answer to (questions like "In my opinion, what is the best animated movie of all time?" and "In my opinion, what would be the most ridiculous thing that could happen right now?" - and they are all opinion questions). After the moderator has provided a question, each of the other players must write a response on their small dry erase board. The moderator selects which answer is his favorite (at which point Apples to Apples would have ended the round), but in Say Anything, the non-moderator players now have 2 bidding tokens on which they can select which answer they think the moderator has picked! Finally, the moderator reveals the "best" answer, and players score for having supplied that answer, but also for bidding that the moderator would pick that answer. The game goes around until each player has been the moderator twice, and then whoever has the most points wins.

The first thing that I like about Say Anything is that you are able to bid on which answer the moderator will guess. Whereas in many other games like this you can only score points by supplying the "best" answer, I really like that you can score points in different ways in this game. This way, even if you're not quite on the same wavelength as the moderator (they might not think your jokes about Michael Jackson are funny, for example... when they definitely are hilarious), you are still able to score points.  This aspect of the game really keeps players from becoming disengaged in the game.  I have played several party games where certain players thought they were coming up with great answers (yes, I was one of them, but I've also seen it happen to other people), just to have the moderator select someone else's answer; those players normally give up on the game about halfway through.  And that makes the game less fun for everyone.

The next thing that (I think) I like about Say Anything is that the answers aren't supplied for you. This, honestly, can be both good or bad. If you are playing with a group of people that aren't especially creative, then it could be really good to have answers already supplied that you simply pick from. However, if you are playing with creative people, you can get much better answers to questions like "In my opinion, what would be the most shocking secret that someone's mother could reveal?" than would be available on a card. (The winning answer was "Her nipples are on her back; and you were breastfed," just in case you were curious. And as a point of note, there is also a Say Anything: Family Edition that tries to have questions that will get a bit more tame of answers. Though, really, it should be pretty easy to scale the level of "adult" answers based on who is playing.)

Now that you know the pros, I really only had one con for Say Anything. Say Anything has a target number of players that it works best with. The game is officially 3-8 players (and you really can't easily go above 8 players since the game wouldn't really work very well in teams and the "Select-O-Matic" (secret selector for the moderator) only has 8 answers.  Though now that I've started rambling to myself, I guess you could make it more than 8 players if you had extra dry erase boards, and the moderator just wrote who had the best answer.  Anyway...) Unfortunately, I don't think the game is nearly as much fun with 3-4 players, either, because of the limited number of answers and the fact that everyone will be bidding on the same few answers available - you really need 5-8 players to play. This is really unfortunate, since most party games have more of a "the more the merrier" aspect to them. With that said, 3-8 players is actually quite a broad spectrum for most games; it's just somewhat limiting in the party game genre.

Overall, I give Say Anything an 8.5/10. I really enjoy the game, and I think that it has bumped Apples to Apples out of circulation in my gaming world. I would recommend this to anyone that likes party games or that likes games that require creativity.

I would like to thank North Star Games for providing a demo copy of Say Anything for me to play - twice! (They provided one before and one after the tornado.) I would also like to thank them for the generosity they showed towards the people of Joplin by donating several games to the tornado victims in the city.

Dixit Review

A game that I recently played strictly based on the online reviews I had read was Dixit (honestly, when I looked at the game at the store, I thought it looked stupid; but I bought it anyway). In full disclosure, party games are not really my favorite genre. They can be fun occasionally, or in the right setting, but for the most part, I'd rather play a strategy game. However, when I went to visit some friends, Dixit seemed much more appropriate than a 2-3 hour mental workout game.

In Dixit, players each have 6 cards with weird pictures in their hand. They take turns being the "storyteller", who selects one of his cards and makes up a sentence about it - it can be a one word sentence, can be sung, or whatever else you can think of. Often we would have sentences like "All dressed up with nowhere to go", or "I'm thinking of fish for dinner", or "Lucky devil". After the storyteller states his sentence, everyone else picks one of their cards that they think matches the same sentence and throw it in the middle. The cards are shuffled up and flipped over and then everyone (but the storyteller) uses their numbered pieces to secretly vote on which picture belonged to the storyteller. From here, points are awarded based on who voted for what, and the storyteller gets points if some (but not all) of the other players got the picture correct. The game goes on like this until the entire pile of cards has been used, at which time the player with the most points wins.

Over the rainbow?

Here's what sets apart Dixit from any other party game that I can remember playing: the storyteller's goal is to get some of the people to guess correctly. If he is so ambiguous that nobody can figure out his card, he gets no points and all the other players do; if he is so direct that everybody is able to get it correct, then, again, he gets nothing but all the other players score. Therefore, it is very fun and interesting to try to think of something just ambiguous enough to trick some people (and then hope that other players throw down other good cards that go well with the story that was used). This mechanic works really well, and is really the heart of Dixit.

The next pro to Dixit is the ambiguity of the images themselves. The images are really just random fantasy pictures about nothing in particular. There are images of toys, cats, paintings, feasts, etc, but none of them are really about anything. On just about any of them you could say to yourself, "I have no idea what is going on there", and that's really the point. The art was very wonderfully created about... nothing. I can just imagine the designer of this game talking to the artist and saying, "Hey, I need you to create about 80 pictures of nothing in particular. Do you have a 5 year old kid around that we can use as a consultant? Maybe you can talk to him about what's going on in his mind and then draw it. Oh, he thinks that the sky is green and that it'd be neat to have raindrops that were filled with animals? Even better!"

I make music?

My final pro for Dixit is really that you don't have to know how people think in the game. Whereas in a game like Apples to Apples, how different people decide which card to pick is really important, in Dixit, you never know because the pictures are all so random. This prevents people from having a big advantage because they have known each other longer, or because they know that someone thinks certain things are funny - instead, it's all about how accurately you can adapt pictures about nothing to a story with no plot.

My only real concern about Dixit is that you go through all of the cards every time that you play the game. Because of this, you are going to be reusing the pictures with each play.  This means that it's up to you as the player to come up with creative new uses for the cards each time. Whereas this is something that will work wonderfully for artistic people, I think this might push the limits for my engineering friends' imaginations. Either way, this is really a neutral point more than a negative, because I think that part of the fun of the game may be in the challenge of seeing the same image over and over and making up new stories for it each time.

Overall, I give Dixit a 9.5/10. This game has jumped to the top of my party game list, as it is something that is creative and fun, but is also something that could be engaging to both extroverts and introverts (no standing up and singing, or acting, or anything like that.... unless you want to).  If you even mildly enjoy party games, I would definitely recommend trying Dixit out.

If you like Dixit, you might also enjoy Say Anything, Fictionaire, and Rory's Story Cubes, or the Board Game Family's Dixit: Odyssey Review.

Wits and Wagers Review

Another game that I found interesting enough to finagle (ahem, "acquire") a copy of was Wits And Wagers.

Wits and Wagers is a "trivia" game. More specifically, it is a party game that happens to use trivia as it's subject matter.  Each game consists of seven questions (there are 700 included in the game). In each question (which all have numerical answers), one person reads the question and then all of the players write down their best guess as to the correct answer (such as how many feet across is the Golden Gate bridge, or how many times could you fit the area of Rhode Island inside of Alaska). All the answers are revealed, and then the players place their wagers on the answer(s) that they think are closest without going over (the players get to wager twice per round at no risk, but can also risk any chips they had previously earned to increase their potential winnings). Whoever bet correctly gets the appropriate payout (anywhere from 2:1 to 6:1), and the person who provided that answer gets a bonus of 3 chips. At the end of the seventh question, whoever has the most chips is the winner.

The first pro to Wits and Wagers is that they have found questions that (most likely) nobody will actually know the answer to. If you, like me, have grown horribly sick of trivia games because you have played Trivial Pursuit far too often with people that can recall anything that they have ever read, then you can really appreciate this pro. This is a game that I can play with my brother (the person I was referring to in the previous sentence), and actually stand a fighting chance. After all, it turns out that he has no idea how old the oldest cat ever was.  He doesn't even know what percent of the United States' land mass is contained in Alaska.  And neither do I.

The second pro is the "wagers" part of wits and wagers (because I just covered the "wits" part, of course). The wagering in the game is first of all very fun. Secondly, I really appreciated that you can't get eliminated in the game. If, like me, you have tons of casinos near you, then you realize that in gambling you are eliminated pretty quickly. Fortunately, in Wits and Wagers, there are two cardboard chips representing your color - you can wager these every round without risking any potential loss, even if you have lost all of your other chips. This keeps everyone engaged in the game, because nobody is going to be sitting out for fear of getting something wrong. If you simply bid your cardboard chips, then worst case scenario is you are wrong and lose nothing.

Now that I've covered the "wits" and the "wagers", it's time to cover the cons. My first con in the game is that it feels a bit too short. Seven questions doesn't really seem like enough to me. However, extending the game would normally just result in the players who were winning gaining even more bonus chips since the game really stacks success on success (unless you bet it all on a wrong answer). However, whenever I have played the game, we have fixed this problem by playing about 3-5 games of it in a row.

The next con that I have for the game is that it seems to really be geared for 4-6 players. Yes, the box claims that you can play with up to 20 players, but with more than a certain number you have to start playing with teams - and I don't think that teams really enhance the experience here. Because of this, I can see Wits and Wagers being played at smaller parties, or parties where people really enjoy trivia, but I think that party games that focus on teams would work better with 10 or more people (such as Cranium and Taboo).

Overall, I give Wits and Wagers an 8.5/10. I will probably not get together to play this with people (hence the not quite 9.0 score), but I do anticipate that I will continue playing it and enjoying it. It is in my top 5 party games right now, and is probably my favorite trivia game of all time (which doesn't say much). If you're burned out on trivia games, but your friends really enjoy them, you definitely need to invest in a copy of Wits and Wagers! (Or for that matter, if you like party games but your party is in the 4-6 range, you should also check this one out.)

I would like to thank North Star Games for providing me with a demo copy of Wits & Wagers to review.

Fictionaire Review

Now to review the Fictionaire series of games (which consists of Classic, Naturals, Fool Science, and Tall Tales). The specific version that I played was Tall Tales, but the actual game is the same, but with different themes and questions.

In Fictionaire, each player takes turns being the "host". The host will read the question at the top of their card and then (without reading the answer) will pass the box of cards (with the answer hidden) to the next player. Each person in turn will either make up an answer to the question or will use the correct answer on the bottom of the card.  (Someone is required to use the correct answer - if nobody has used it previously, then the last person is required to use it). Once all of the potential answers have been heard, the host will pick the answer they think is correct. Whoever they pick gets a point, and then if the host is correct they will also get a point - if not, then the person who tricked them gets a second point. The game goes around until each person has been the host twice. At that point, the player with the most points wins.

Fictionaire is not an especially innovative game. In fact, it is admittedly a dressed up version of the old kid's game of Dictionary in which kids use a dictionary to do this same concept. With that said, however, the place where Fictionaire shines is in the actual questions and answers. I played the Tall Tales version, and I was completely amazed at what some of the answers were. The game is fun not only to play, but also to read the extra information that is provided at the bottom of the cards. This is a great game in which the players are learning (though not necessarily learning anything "useful") while enjoying themselves.

There are two main cons to Fictionaire. The first con is really only a con for the ultra-competitive. In Fictionaire, since the host knows who gave each answer, they can be spiteful and choose answers that they do not think are correct simply so that certain people will not get points as a strategy to winning. Hopefully, you are able to play this with a group that views it as a fun little party game and does not get caught up enough to use this strategy.

The second con with Fictionaire relates to replayability. Once you have played through all of the cards in the set, the game no longer really works, since you now know the answers. However, with 120 questions per set, you are able to play 15 games with 4 players (the minimum suggested) or about 8 games with 7 players (the maximum suggested). That is quite a bit of replayability for $10, so I think that this fact was factored into the cost, which is why I did not let it prevent me from trying this game out.

Overall, I give the Fictionaire series an 8.5/10. For what it is and the cost it comes at, I think it is worth trying out by anyone that enjoys word games. This is also a game that I think could be utilized in schools and libraries as a fun and educational activity, and I have recommended it to at least one school librarian already.