This game hurt my brain - or was it the wine (Cranium)

Member Name: sersha

Product:	Cranium
Date:	28/08/02 (433 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good ice breaker, cheap night in

Disadvantages: clay smells horrible, embarrassment factor

I've just returned from one of my regular girly-weekend meets. Once every couple of months the four of us get together and spend a night with a few (ok, 4 or 5) bottles of wine, crisps and dip, penny sweets and the obligatory board game. The board game bit is always the best, especially as two of us love them, and two of absolutely hate playing games of any sort and will go to almost any lengths to avoid them (including hiding behind the sofa.)

Unfortunately for poor Zoe I am one of the board game fans, and this week I took along Cranium, which I have admired in Starbucks for far too long, read reviews about and generally just wanted for many many months.

Cranium is a sort of cross between Pictionary and Trivial Pursuit. Fiendishly popular in America, it's supposed to reach parts of your brain that other games just don't get to.

There are four main activity types that you might be required to do while playing the game, all of them within a time limit set by an eggtimer. The time was fair, except for the sculpting tasks, which I thought should have got two turns of the timer.

Creative Cat - the blue box
Cards from this box are generally drawing tasks (like pictionary) or sculpting tasks. There's a tub of Cranium Clay provided. I was a bit miffed that I didn't get a shot at sculpting (you play the game in teams of two, so my teammate did get a go, but we never drew another sculpting task after that.) The clay smells foul, but otherwise sculpting looks fun. Poor Zoe had to sculpt 'Humpty Dumpty' (fun to watch!) and also had to draw 'the offside rule' - with a twist - the card stated she had to keep her eyes shut. Infuriating when you draw a few ideas and then can't see to point at any of them again afterwards!


Word Worm - yellow box
I have to admit I thought I would be good at this, coming from a background of working on dictionaries. Spelling out loud without writing some
thing down is hard enough, but spelling it backwards? Much harder than it looks. The timing limitation means there's a fair bit of pressure. Other tasks in this category involved solving anagrams, guessing the definitions of obscure words from multiple choices, and filling in the blanks (a bit like crossword clues.)

Star Performer - green box
My worst nightmare. Hum or whistle a song so your partner can guess it, perform an action or thing (Zoe got 'nappy rash') or impersonate a celebrity without saying any names or places.

Data Head - red box
General knowledge questions, or true/false statements. Lots of trick questions and bizarre facts (Is it true that a cockroach can live for several weeks without its head? Yes!) These cards involved some heated arguments over the answer and were good for starting discussions outwith the gameplay.

Sometimes you get special cards which mean both teams play at once, so it's a race to hum or draw against the other team. The game is full of quirks like this which make it that little bit better than its rivals.

You travel around the board and race to the centre, where you then have to successfully complete an activity from each category, and finally, complete one from whatever category the opposing team chooses. There are two paths around the board, the slow and the fast, and depending on how well you do, you can end up travelling on either for different sections of the game.

We all really enjoyed this game (the five, oh ok, more like six bottles of wine helped) and it was worth the £30 I spent on it. I would recommend it for 4 or more adults. Two teams of two is the minimum number of players but more would be better fun. I think children are supposed to be able to play it but its not that suitable - the word and quiz questions would be too hard in most cases.

I'm taking Cranium with me on my hen night in the vain (some might say quite sad!) hope tha
t I end up in a nice hotel room with a bottle of good wine, and not chained to a lamppost somewhere with a stupid t-shirt on. Who knows?

Thanks for the read

Sersha

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