Game Review

Concept:

Explore your hidden talents with inventive contests such as pantomime, drawing while blindfolded, drawing with your foot on the backs of other players, word guessing challenges, and rapidly recalling facts about your teammates.

Gameplay:

Players choose teams -- at least two teams with two members are needed.  Teams then choose any nearby object to be their game piece.  The piece is placed on the board in the place of the team's choice.

The team with the tallest playing piece goes first.  On a turn, the six-sided die is rolled. The playing piece can move either clockwise or counter-clockwise.  It moves the number of spaces rolled on the die -- skipping any occupied spaces.  Upon landing on a space, draw a card of the specified category and follow the instructions.

There are five categories of cards:  Stage Fright --  acting or singing puzzles; Think Tank -- brain twister exercises; Sensory Perception -- touch, feel, and sense to solve a riddle; Double Whammy -- more difficult challenges, but double the payoff; and Free to be Me -- topics to help learn about the other players.  If your team successfully completes a task on the card, they keep the card -- cards also give bonus tokens for each correct answer (many cards have up to 3 answers).

At the start of your teams turn, you can spend five (5) tokens to steal another team's card.

After answering/performing, the die is passed to the team on the left and the next team takes their turn.

Once a team has collected all five category cards, they move their piece to the center of the board instead of rolling.  To win, the team must complete a Hidden Talent category card.  If they do, they win... if not -- other teams can try to complete the task and move to the center of the board to attempt to win on their next turn.

Winning Conditions:

• The first team to collect all 5 category cards and win the hidden talent card in the center of the board wins.

Our Opinion:

Our gaming group tends not to play this style of party game, except on holiday occasions at large gatherings, like Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July.  When we do play these games, the wives of our reviewers are the instigators -- that is because this kind of game is much more social as opposed to strategic.  So, our group began to play this with some trepidation.  We have played many variants of this style of game, but this particular game had some distinct differences from other popular games that may or may not make you decide to prefer it over the others.

We felt that this game is best played with large groups -- more than 2 teams with more than two members.  It also is a good icebreaker game -- if you don't know the other players very well, this game could be quite informative and socially stimulating.  If, however, you have a small group playing (4 to 6 players) the game is a little flat. 

We appreciated that the rules were written intentionally to be a little loose -- if there is a rule confusion, the players decide and you keep playing.  For strategically minded players, the ability to steal cards was a nice addition -- potentially sabotaging a group that struggles with a specific category could be fun.  The game also played very quickly with a small group. This is good for parties in two ways -- it keeps the game moving along, and it can be mercifully quick for players who don't want to play this kind of party game, but their date has shanghaied them into playing anyway.

Our biggest problem with the game was that with a small number of players who know each other well, many of the categories like "Free to be Me" were very dull. (It was obvious who had the largest belt size, and everyone playing had been married, with children, before playing this game.) We theorize that a group of college freshmen or high school seniors could enjoy this icebreaker-like category -- but we were all good friends, so nothing surprised us in these categories.

In all, the game is okay -- but it lacked an ingredient to inspire us to play it again.  Aspects of the game were fun and clever, such as some of the Sensory Perception challenges. Some aspects were standard party game fare, as with the pantomime and charade challenges. And some aspects just didn't inspire us (Free to be Me). The game is aimed at ages 16 and up... so it's not really a family game, although parts could be used in a tamer manner.  It is a game built around socializing --  unless you plan to entertain large groups often or hang out with a lot of single adults, the social awkwardness doesn't come across as fun. 

Where to buy:

Any local Game or hobby store or order it online at www.playrigamarole.com -- it costs about US $35.