Our family has a tradition of spending Thanksgiving afternoon, after the gorging, crafts, football broadcast, and cleanup playing board games. I like introducing the crowd to something new we've never played before, and trading up between trivia games, charades type games, drawing and guessing games, Apples to Apples type games, etc. This game looked really fun, judging by the reviews, so I bought it and the 10 of us gathered around the dining table to give it a whirl.
Players gather around the table. The first player draws a card. He reads the card aloud and then does what the card asks him to do. Example: Do a 15-second cheer for one of the people at the table. Once that is done he draws another card (a curse card), reads it silently to himself, then gives it to someone at the table, whomever he wishes to give it to. That person then must read the card out loud and perform whatever is written on the card for the remainder of the game. If he fails to perform the curse and someone catches him he has to turn that curse card over in front of him. Once the curse card is drawn and given away, the next player draws his cards - one for himself and a curse card to give away. Play moves around the table, and around the table, and around again. When a player is caught not performing his curses and has turned over three curse cards in front of him he is out of the game. Players are eliminated this way until there is a winner. Very easy game to just start playing right out of the box.
It was a complete riot... at first. Oh my gosh we were laughing our fool heads off for the first hour. But, maybe it was because we were slow (too courteous) to catch each other not always carrying out their curses, or we were all just too good at keeping up with all the little curses we were given, but after awhile this game got stupid, and one by one we got bored with it and wandered away from the table. We all just kind of petered out after an hour+.
Overall, I still smile at the memories of my 75 year old mom having to say, "I pity the fool" like Mr. T before anything else that she said. Everybody totally lost it when Karen couldn't bend her elbows and way overacted the shenanigans. Michael had to strum a pretend guitar and talk like Elvis every time he talked. Any time anyone clapped Karen had to announce her undying love for that person. I was not allowed to laugh at anything and had to say with a serious face, "THAT'S NOT FUNNY!" every time I started to laugh at anything. Gawd... do you know how hard that is? And then to have a curse card tossed at me later that forced me to have to say it in a high-pitched falsetto voice. Sheesh.
My advice, definitely buy it and play it, but be tough to catch people not doing their thing... and only play it for maybe an hour tops, then move on to something else. If you really love it, you can go back and play it again later. Having a bunch of clowns in your group helps. But the stoic person having to do something way out of character is just as funny.
Good memories!