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Celebrating National Game & Puzzle Week 2018: Games Adults Play pack

Board games are the underrated crowd pleaser of many parties.  Although the genre itself is known in the mainstream for trash like Monopoly,  there are plenty of amazing board/card games that fit a whole bunch of  different scenarios. To celebrate both the time of togetherness at  Thanksgiving and National Game & Puzzle Week this month, we here at  Byte have done short reviews for the board games we received at GenCon  2018, primarily from the publisher Games Adults Play. These games were  played by a full party of people and were given a full playthrough or  two for each game, depending on how much we wanted to play them.

‘Shit Happens’ is a perfectly adequate party game

by Emily Worrell

Image from Games Adults Play

Shit Happens features an array of cards depicting situations  that range from mildly inconvenient to excruciatingly terrible. The  players’ job seems simple: figure out where the cards belong in a  ranking system, numbered from 0 to 100, of least miserable to most.  However, this is a much more difficult and interesting task than one  might think. It is made fun by the crazy situations and the discussions  they lead to, however, it does get repetitive after a while and some of  the rankings seem frustratingly off.

To start off with the positive aspects, this game is a fun way to get  conversations flowing and guests talking without forcing anyone to  reveal deep or embarrassing secrets, as many other party games do. The  different situations are crazy and funny yet plausible, and watching  fellow players struggle to rank awkward situations is pretty fun.

However, depending on the cards you get and the skill of the players,  the game length can fluctuate significantly. While the cards are for  the most part pretty varied, they can start to feel repetitive if  gameplay goes too long. The instructions asserted that the rankings were  decided by a panel of specialists including psychiatrists, doctors, and  other medical health professionals, but some of the rankings just  seemed totally wrong and therefore impossible to guess. This became a  bit of a nuisance, especially when it threw off the game length and  pacing. Overall, this game is worth playing a few times, but isn’t  necessarily one that you’ll come back to again and again.

‘True Colors’ is a bright and light-hearted game for any kinds of companions

by Makayla Hughes

Image from Games Adults Play

True Colors is  a game meant for friends, but it’s also really fun to play if you don’t  really know the people you are playing with. The purpose of the game is  simple: gather some friends, read off a scenario, and anonymously vote  for people who you think would be most likely to do it. Then, put down  your colored pawn on the card of how many votes you think you received:  most, some, or none. The votes are then tallied and you receive points  off of your answer. The concept of the game is simple, which makes it  easy to focus on just having fun. Also, the mechanics of the game are  easy to learn even though the instructions may seem a bit confusing.  It’s best to just jump right in.

This  would be a perfect game to play with friends or even acquaintances. I  loved every moment playing this and will probably end up buying it to  play on my own. I was unsure about it at first because the tagline is  “What do your friends really think of you?” so I felt like you had to  play this game with people who knew you really well. That isn’t the  case, and the group I played with had a lot of fun with each other. The  prompts were unique, some of them more so than others, and the rounds  seemed to fly by.

By  the end of each game, I was wanting to play more of it, so my only  complaint is that I wish the game would last longer. That’s not too big  of an issue because you can easily just continue playing and just flip  the scoring sheet to the next page, which is what we did. I like how  they turned a basic voting card game into something a little more. True Colors is a really fun game and highly recommend it.

‘Friend or Faux’ is best saved for the closest friends

by Tanner Kinney

Image from Games Adults Play

The mildly intrusive and personal party game is nothing new,  particularly ones aimed toward adults. So it’s no surprise that Games  Adults Play has a number of these titles, ranging in how personal they  get. As opposed to the fairly surface level True Colors, Friend or Faux really  gets into the meat of trying to predict what your friends really think  about scenarios and situations. The game is simple: the cards are  divided into five stages, and the game is played in five rounds. Each  round has each player draw a card and read off the question or scenario.  Then, the other players make a guess on what the answer is. Whoever  gets it right gets a point. Play continues for five rounds, with the  only difference being in how personal the card get. So, say, the first  stage will include cards as simple as “What’s my favorite color?”, while  stage five includes pretty much exclusively  sexual questions. The game even recommends you don’t play using stages  four and five if playing with more squeamish and conservative friends.

The simplicity of the game isn’t a problem; it’s no different from  other similar games aside from getting straight to the biting personal  questions. The problems come from the people you play the game with.  Some of these kinds of games can be great with groups of casual  acquaintances, with or without special beverages. This game, however,  isn’t too much fun with casual acquaintances. This isn’t the kind of  game to bring to the office board game party. Let’s just say that much.

This kind of game is perfect for someone with a really tightly knit  group of friends. There are so many questions that require you to know  specific names of people in your friends’ lives which doesn’t really  work for groups that aren’t close friends. Even then, I doubt the game  will be that much more fun unless special beverages are involved. The  questions are all fairly generic, even the stage five questions don’t  really get that in-depth. I would’ve like to see more oddly specific  questions, where it becomes a guessing game where not even the card  holder really knows the answer. As it stands now, Friend or Faux is more faux than friend, and wouldn’t liven up even the dullest of parties. 

“Tossed Salad” will leave you feeling poisoned

by Blake Chapman

Image from Games Adults Play

There’s no better feeling than popping out a nice deck of cards and  playing go-fish with friends or spending hours arguing over a intense  game of Monopoly. The one key factor when it comes to producing a  successful board game is engaging your players and keeping them  invested. Unfortunately, Tossed Salad is a 40-minute excursion that becomes rotten seemingly after the very first round of play.

Tossed Salad is an adult version of charades where two teams  take turns guessing what lewd material has been featured on each card  inside the time of 60 seconds. There are three rounds to the game, each  restricting the clues given further and further. If the premise of this  game seems as though it was thought up in the span of five minutes, well  you probably won’t be surprised when I tell you the production value  was planned out in even less time. The content of the Tossed Salad bowl  features scraps of what felt like green and orange printing paper with  lingo seemingly from a random search of Urban Dictionary.

Round one begins with one tosser from each team selecting clues from  the bowl, getting their teammates to guess the word and keep selecting  more until time runs out. After both teams have completed their turns  you tally up the scores and see who came out on top. If you are more  masochistic like the plastic container suggests, you can continue play  with the previously drawn cards from the first round with extra sets of  rules. At this point the game switches from being an exploration of your  friends’ cursed minds into a simple memory game. Because of the  outlandish nature of the clues, players usually say one word or complete  one gesture and the rest of their team remembers it from the previous  playthrough. The clues are so vague that even though it’s meant for  players ages 18 and up, no one understands any of the topics the first  time around unless they have been restlessly studying the homepage of  Urban Dictionary for the last year.

The gimmicks of Tossed Salad wear off quicker than any player  hopes to admit. Even though it offers some good laughs and enjoyment  through the first round, it overstays its welcome not long after. It  seems as though the bland gameplay of Tossed Salad will make you want to toss it straight down the garbage disposal.




Images: Games Adults Play

Featured Image: Photo taken by Tanner Kinney

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