Inquisitive Squirrels

After achieving the biggest hit of his career with Codenames, game designer Vlaada Chvátil has decided to step away from elaborate "gamer games" for a moment and offer up another lighter party game, That's a Question.

Imagine a family-friendly version of "Would You Rather?", and you're in the ballpark of what this game is. Players take turn as questioner, where they can frame one of three "A or B" questions:

• Which would you miss more if it ceased to exist?
• Which of these would you choose?
• Whom do you consider worse?

The two potential answers come from a hand of five cards the player holds, each printed with answers to all three questions. (You spin the cards around to fit the form of question you choose.) That question you formulate is then put to one specific other player, who secretly answers it as everyone else guesses how they'll answer. Guessers gain points for being right. You gain points for framing a difficult question -- points for each person who guessed wrong on the question you set up for someone else.

There are a few other wrinkles in the rules, including a mechanic that spreads questions around and keeps the same player from being asked something too often. There are also single-use tokens (and ways to earn and re-use them) allowing you earn more points on answers you feel particularly confident about, or answers you think most players will get wrong.

Oh, and by the way, you're all squirrels gathering nuts. At least, that's the flavor the game purports to wrap around this entire affair. Not that I understand why.

That's a Question is a bit better than many "get to know you"/"how well do you know each other" type games. You can play with relative strangers, as they A/B construction gives everybody a chance to compete by constraining the possible answers. At the same time, the game's three core questions are well chosen to dig down even among people you know, and the goal to actually stump everyone else actually means the answers will rarely be easy. That said... it's obviously a pretty shallow experience, even by party game standards. Vlaada Chvátil has not followed Codenames with something that's likely to become another massive hit.

I'd give That's a Question a B. It's not a must-have for your collection, but wouldn't be a bad one in it. It might be especially good to have around over the holidays, if you'll be at a large gathering of people who don't play too many games.