Barnyard Antics

I like to try to blog a review of board games when I try them out for the first time. (Well, more after having played them a couple times, unless I outright hate them.) It only just occured to me tonight that there's one game I've played several times throughout the year, but never commented on -- Snorta.

It's easy for me to see how this slipped under the radar. Like nearly all of Out of the Box's other games, this isn't a deep "thinky" sort of game... it's a social, party atmosphere sort of game. And also, like their most of their other games (Apples to Apples springs to mind), it's a pretty strong entry in that category. This is to say, it's not the sort of game I'd want to play every week, or maybe even every month, but when I do play it, I generally enjoy it.

Every player has an animal figurine hidden under a barn. You see what animal everyone got at the start of the game, but once play begins, you have to remember what they all have. Then each player is given an equal number of cards, each card depicting one of 12 different animals. You go around the circle, turning over one card from your stack when it's your turn. If the animal on the card you turn over matches that on a card in front of another player, the race is on for you two -- each of you must quickly make the sound of the animal in the other player's barn. If you do so first, the other player must scoop up all the cards in front of both of you, and return them to the bottom of the stack he's dealing from. Your goal is to get rid of your stack of cards.

Snorta, as it turns out, can be a game of pretty extreme mental dissonance. You're looking at the animal on the cards in front of you, yet trying not to make those noises, but the noises of the animals hiding under the other players' barns. The mismatch can be striking. And of course, it's more chaotic (and more fun) with as many players as possible. Perfect party game, in other words.

It's particularly diabolical to play two or three games of Snorta back-to-back, having each player redraw a new animal for each game. Just when you get it figured out once, you switch everybody up, and then it's complete word salad in your brain.

Fortunately, you can play a whole game in about 10 minutes. Any more, and it might wear a bit thin. And, as I said, it's not the sort of game you'd probably want to play much. But it's good every now and then, and especially good if there are people with children in your circle of friends. I'm not sure how well a young child could actually play the game, but one could certainly grasp the idea instantly... and it's very rare in my experience to find a game appropriate for a kid that you don't mind playing yourself.

So there you are. Do you often find yourself in situations with six or more game players? Snorta might be a good thing to have in your game closet.