Charades on Speed (Guesstures)

Member Name: JonnyM79

Product:	Guesstures
Date:	12/04/02 (254 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Humorous, Quick and Easy, Too fast to get dull

Disadvantages: Not enough cards, Not for recluses

Everyone has played charades at some point in their lives which is highly convenient for me because it saves a great deal of time in explaining this game. It's a version of charades that is very much against the clock and this certainly adds a zing to the proceedings.

The basic gameplay is like this. The game comes with a clapperboard with slots to place 4 cards into. You separate into 2 teams (it works best with about 3 or 4 per team), and take it in turns to play. The team members take it in turns to be the actor. The actor is given 4 cards, each of which has 2 words on, an easy and a hard one. They line them up along the top of the clapperboard in the order of their choice and wind up its mechanical insides. Upon clapping the clapper its mechanism will start, and it ticks (alarmingly like how you'd imagine a time-bomb sounding). The actor has to mime the words without speaking as fast as possible, and once someone shouts it out can grab it off the top of the clapper. If he's too slow it will fall down into the clapper and he'll have to move onto the next one. You get 3 points for each hard word recovered, and 1 for each easy one, and the team with the higher score wins. There, easy.

The game is extremely well balanced: you get about 15 seconds per word, and countless times just as someone guesses the word and you go to grab it it will drop away. The ticking is an extremely neat touch as the sound really does add an element of urgency. The words range from dead easy to virtually impossible and the trick is to put the easy ones first to give yourself some extra time for the hard ones you've chosen to tackle.

Clearly this isn't a game for introverts and might not be most suitable to play when prim and correct Great Aunt Gertrude is visiting. We found that it works exceptionally well as soon as everyone's had enough alcohol to lose their inhibitions: prime post-pub or dinner party ma
terial. It doesn't take too long to play and you can basically make it last as many rounds as you want so there's no danger of getting bored. If I had a criticism it would be that there aren't quite enough cards and you might start to remember some of the words. We've solved this problem by drinking enough that by the third round everyone's too hammered to remember anything anyway. In any case it will take several games before you even start to repeat them once.

Guesstures then is a game that will give you some good fun and won't take all day to complete. It's an excellent way of adding a bit of spice into the tired old charades formula and will prevent anyone from taking themselves too seriously as they crawl around the carpet imitating a cow. Thumbs up from me.

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