Richard DiPippo
United States
Newmarket
New Hampshire
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First off, answer these questions:
1. Do my friends and I enjoy playing charades?
2. Do my friends and I enjoy playing trivia games?
3. Do my friends and I enjoy playing Pictionary type games?
4. Do my friends and I enjoy word games like Hangman? Or guessing definitions of words? Or unscrambling words?
5. Would I find it hilarious watching one of my friends trying to get people to guess the word 'spank' using only a ball of clay?
And yes, #5 did happen to me while playing this game. And yes, it was quite hilarious (at least I thought so).
If you answered 'yes' to 0-1 of these questions, stop reading this review immediately. Really, its OK, I won't be offended. Cranium is not for you.
2 yesses? You will probably get some enjoyment out of this game, but it still might not be for you. But keep reading...the section marked Important might still be of use to you.
3-5? You will probably like this game.
Important: It should be noted that if you are with a group of friends selecting a game to play and someone says "Hey, let's play Trivial Pursuit!", (and you are like me and really hate that game), you should feel free to suggest Cranium instead if its available. You won't seem like a jerk because it has a trivia element to it (make sure to point this out), and even if you don't like it, I can virtually guarantee that you will have more fun playing this game instead of Trivial Pursuit.
I have both games in my collection, and Trivial Pursuit has yet to be selected over Cranium.
Caveat: It can be very, very frustrating playing this game with people who have a serious deficiency in pop culture knowledge. They will be completely clueless on a majority of the answers, and this game might not be much fun for them.
Cranium basically takes a large number of other games, removes most of the unnecessary mechanics while preserving the basic idea, and mashes them together while adding a roll and move mechanic on top of them.
For example, trivia. Take Trivial Pursuit and remove everything but the trivia cards. This is the main essence of the trivia (or Data Head) cards, although there are slight variations like true/false or multiple choice questions.
Take Pictionary and again remove everything except the cards telling you what to draw. You now have the deck of Creative Cat cards, which has its own variations. You might have to model the clue in clay, or draw clues with your eyes closed.
Next up is Charades. You might get a basic charade in which your teamates guess the answer based on clues that you pantomime, or you might have to impersonate a famous person (you're allowed to talk as long as you don't use names of people or places), or hum a song that your teammates have to guess. This is called Star Performer.
Lastly is Word Worm. You might have to guess a phrase from a clue and a few letters of the answer, or unscramble a word or guess its definition.
Your group split up into teams, and each team takes turns trying to guess the answers on the cards. In the case of Creative Cat or Star Performer, one person tries to get their teammates to guess the answer. With Data Head or Word Worm, the whole team works together to get the answer. If you guess correctly, you roll a ten sided dice that has colors, not numbers, which correspond to the different types of cards I described. You then move to the next space on the board that matches the color. Once a team reaches the center, they have to successfully complete one more card from each of the decks, and then, the other teams choose one of the four decks and they answer one final question from it to win.
There's a little more to the rolling and moving, but not much. Its a clunky mechanic that can sometimes give a team a pretty sizable advantage (certain spaces allow you to move to a 'fast track' if you answer correctly, where you progress to the end of the game faster), but it works decently well. At some point, if I have an open minded group of gamers, I would like to remove the board and just keep score (while still using the dice to select which deck of cards to draw from), play to an agreed number of points (or set a time limit), and see how that works.
The bottom line is that this is a party game. Its a good party game. Its easy to teach, because everyone has played Trivial Pursuit, Charades, or Pictionary. Almost anyone can contribute to the team effort (although read my caveat above). And, most importantly, its really fun with the right group of people.
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Silas Knight
United States
Arcata
California
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>Caveat: It can be very, very frustrating playing this game with people who have a serious deficiency in pop culture knowledge. They will be completely clueless on a majority of the answers, and this game might not be much fun for them.
Great review! This was the point that made me get rid of my copy. It might have something to do with my location (Humboldt County, California, behind the Redwood Curtain). I think there are more people in my community that don't connect to pop culture than most (I'd say only 25% of the people I know have televisions in their house). We're not Amish or anything, though there's more hippies than most, and it's impossible for me trust that at a random game night there won't be at least one or two people who can't tell me who hosted Who Wants to Be A Millionaire (probably not a question in the game, but a reasonable example for my community's lack of pop connection)....
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Craig Bryant
United States
Georgia
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I have never appreciated the appeal of this game...slap together substandard versions of six other games and put it in a box and the result is, for me, a very unappetizing stew. It reminds me of cleaning out the fridge. I'd just so much rather play balderdash, Trivial Pursuit, Hangman, Charades, Pictionary, or what have you. And there is the aspect you touch on of Cranium being utterly married to pop culture references that, for me, is really the kiss of death.
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