Claire

Gameplay Gist: People take turns being ‘the judge’, who reads out a prompt from a black card. Everyone else plays a white card from their hand in response to the prompt. Then the judge shuffles the white cards, reads them aloud and picks his/her favorite, and the person who played that white card wins the round (and receives the black card). After a predetermined number of rounds, the person with most black cards wins. However, the real point of the game is the shock value, as all the white cards have crude/shocking/random phrases on them. For example, for the black card “What are my parents hiding from me?”, someone might play “Harry Potter erotica”, then people laugh.

Ok, but is it good? The first time I played this, I laughed so hard I cried. The second time was almost as fun, but by the third time (when I’d seen most of the cards) I was so so bored. Now, whenever it’s brought out at a party I make some excuse to leave.

Some people seem to like it beyond the first one or two times, and there are some pros that make it a good party game:
– It’s super easy to explain & learn
– You can miss a turn or two and still jump back in, or people can join after 1 or 2 rounds
– You can make the game as long or as short as you like
– It can be fun to try and guess what cards the judge of that round will like most

But even with all that, I do think it gets stale rather quickly and there are many other good party games out there! My suggestion would be to play it once at a board games cafe (towards the end of the night when people have had a few) and then just leave it there.