Art Test

My taste in games tends toward the more strategically sophisticated "Euro games," but sometimes you have a crowd around, and you need a good party game. It's awfully hard to beat Time's Up for a fantastic party game (in my group, at least), but we recently found another strong contender.

It's called Telestrations. Technically, I don't suppose you'd actually need to buy the game to play it -- in fact, BoardGameGeek has the public domain version of it under the strange name Eat Poop You Cat. But the boxed version of it has some handy dry erase markers and booklets to ease the process.

The game is essentially Pictionary crossed with Telephone. You start with a word or short phrase, and must draw an illustration of it. You then pass that illustration to the player on your left, who must try to guess your drawing. But then, without checking to see if he guessed correctly, he passes his guess (right or wrong) to the player on his left. That player then draws the word he's been given (which may or may not be the original word)... and so on around the table, the original concept possibly being ever more corrupted as it works its way back to the starting player.

A simple idea. The scoring is pretty loose (in the "serious" version, but even more so in the "fun" version). But the thing is, the game generates enough laughs that scoring is hardly the point. I actually don't think I'd want to play the game with too many actually skilled artists in the mix; the fun comes from watching the tougher concepts devolve with each iteration.

The packaged Telestrations version of the game does a good job with its clue cards, offering a decent mix of things that stand a good chance of surviving a trip around the circle, and others that assuredly won't. Each of the times I've played, there were plenty of laughs and fun for all. Better still, the game actually gets more enjoyable the more players you have in it -- a rarity, even for a party game.

If you tend to have a large number of people at your game night, or if your friends aren't into the deep "thinkie" games, Telestrations might be one for you to pick up.