Popis hry

So I was walking around Cross Iron Mills mall one weekend with my Friends, and stumbled upon this game at a kiosk for sale. First thing I was drawn to was the name, so I obviously had to take a look. Being goaded on by my friend I gave up and purchased it.

The game consists of a stack of cards with different categories (think trivial pursuit type cards) consisting of Games, Comics, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Miscellaneous. Each category is assigned a different colour. You roll the dice and what colour comes up you need to answer what is shown on the drawn card. Everytime you win you gain a point and the person with the most points wins at the end. Every question is a List question where you need to rattle off a certain number of answers (such as name 5 Spider-Man villains for example). Now this seems extremely easy at first for most anything, but the twist is that everybody playing can steal the point you rolled for by saying they can name more than you and doing so. For example you say yes I can name 5 Spider-man Villains, the next person says 7, it comes back and you bid 8, finally someone says “hold on I can name 14 villains” so if you can’t name at least 15 that person can steal your point by naming 14 villains. If they can’t list the amount they proclaimed they are penalized with a -2 point token. This provides an interesting dynamic to the game as you can try to bluff your way to increasing the difficulty of the next person, but at the same time must be aware that you might be forced to name that number as well if no one out bids you. I also found out the hard way, even if you’re confident not to just throw out a large number (like 20) because when put on the spot sometimes you forget a couple names and tarnish your Geek standing among your friends.

The rules that come with the game are sparse, and allows a lot of leeway for implementation of house rules. If playing I would recommend time limits on bidding so that a player can’t just think for 1 minute on how many Cartoon Cats they actually can think of before bidding as that would drag out the game. Also sometimes there is ambiguity in the topic such as if something counts both the comic version and tv or film version, but once again the game seems to encourage the playing group to hash out these things themselves which is nice and prevents too much rule lawyering.

While the box is big, it’s basically a dice and a stack of cards. The penalty tokens aren’t even necessary really unless your group has trouble keeping track of numbers, or cheaters abound, so the portability of this game is a plus.

There is a Pop Culture version of this game as well for those that may want to play with friends that are less geeky and would feel intimidated or just aren’t geeky enough to put up a challenge with this Geek Version.

Five Word Summary: Geeky Trivia, Casual Fun, Strategic

A simple game, with poker like strategy and Geeky but you do get tired after a game or two. I feel it’s best played with a minimum of 3 or 4 players. I give this 7 Dice out of 10.