It’s no secret that I like party games, I like embarrassing myself and/or my friends and just generally being a bit silly. So when Game Off landed on my desk, (like literally landed it was thrown toward my general direction!) I was excited to try it out as soon as possible. Luckily as our jobs involve playing and talking about games I was able to gather the rest of the Playopolis team pretty quick for a game.
Game Off is precisely 120 different games inside a tiny square box whereby the different games are written on cards. These are divided into a few different categories, Mind, Body, Courage, Skill and Luck - as well as two dice! On your turn you simply roll the dice to indicate who your opponent is based on the number and direction you are sitting round the table. The player will then get a chance to choose a card from the categories, depending on your strengths or even the opponents weaknesses. Next the two players will battle in the game written on the card, and attempt to win. If you win, you’ll keep the card, which acts as the points at the end of the game! Hey presto, its as simple as that.
Comedic Rope Pulling: A Guide
‘But what kind of games can I expect?’ I hear you cry; well some of the games are physical, like the time we played and two people had to have a mime off. Both had to attempt to pull an imaginary rope and the rest of us picked the best player. This in itself is a pretty hilarious thing to try to judge, do you go for comedy element of rope pulling, or stick with the player who stayed true to the artistic elements of pulling an invisible rope? We went with comedy rope pulling.
There are other physical games too such as the one where I was set against another player and the one who threw a card further won the challenge. Spoiler here, cards from this game do not travel as far as you’d expect, especially after some of our players managed to get the card behind themselves (not naming names!) Other cards are just pure luck like who has the longest beard, or mind games like having to think of a great insult for the other players, and be as inventive as possible.
A shared blanket of humor!
Game Off had challenges for everyone, although I was not very good at many of them, which disclaimer is totally my fault and not Game Offs! If you have three or more people and they can read and move and have a sense of humor you can be playing this simple party game within about 30 seconds. I love the variety in this game one minute I am having to walk through the office with my eyes closed and attempt to walk in a straight line, the next I am having a drum off and attempting to drum out a musical rhythm.
This game is pretty inclusive, after playing in the office we took it home and played with our family, including kids. They could easily play for almost every challenge, although we did have to pick and choose a few of the cards, for instance some of the luck cards talked about mobile phone numbers, which clearly the kids didn't have. Likewise the humor in this game can be as smutty as you like so when we played with kids in our group its all quite slapstick funny, nice and PG whereas when we played with just adults the banter gets more blue!
Game Off plays quickly, you can set as many turns for people as you like, and because you might be chosen as an opponent when its other players turns you maintain being engaged throughout the game. Even when your not chosen to play there are loads of cards that need you to judge, which you can choose to do fairly or not! As a result, the judgement makes this game quite a talkative one, where players might find themselves loudly arguing as to why they should win the horse drawing competition.
Hopping and Skipping to the conclusion
This game is so much fun, it can be played pretty much anywhere you have the space to make yourself look a bit stupid. Its versatile and everyone who I have played it with loved it and thanks to the variety of challenges, no one in the game has a real advantage creating a good level playing field. Its cheap and cheerful price just makes this even better, and the card quality is fairly decent. If your looking for something different in a party game, Game Off could well be for you.