Come As You Aren't: A Role-Playing Game for Adventurous Couples

I found Come As You Aren't: A Role-Playing Game for Adventurous Couples to be uninspiring and poorly executed. That's not to say that everyone would feel that way; for me I think it was mostly that I had certain expectations and this game did not meet them.

First, there are no rules. The two-sentence description on the back of the box is all you get. It's probably to promote creativity or something, but it just felt undeveloped to me. The concept is you choose a Who card, a What card, and a Where  card and write down a time and place and put inside the included envelope. You leave then it for your partner to find.

I have so many questions. According to that, there's only one Who card. So I'm assuming Partner 1 picks out the scenario and Partner 2 enacts all of it? Leaving Partner 1 to improvise? I find it kind of annoying that the game doesn't provide a set of people on a Who card. I suppose this is where the creativity comes in--you could add a second card maybe? Instead though, you get one with a cheesy name, occupation, accessory, and a little three sentence description of their personality (also cheesy). Every description is written with unnecessary ellipses or em-dashes for the card to explain it's own joke. Every. Time.

For example:
Name
D. Major

Occupation
Concert Violinist

Accessory
Black Bow Tie

D. Major can't seem to stay out of treble...treble clef that is. [continues for three more sentences]

or

Name
Red Inkwell

Occupation
Bestselling Author

Accessory
Notebook and Pencil

Red Inkwell has a nice, well-rounded body...of work. [continues on]

I don't particularly want to be any of these people. But I do like that they each have an accessory so there is an element of dress up involved, which would help to get in character.

For the What, I would have hoped for a scenario, some kind of storyline. Instead, it's a small thing that doesn't seem like it would naturally come up at all and doesn't relate to the "role-playing" character aspect. "Be the one to suggest to go into the bedroom" is odd because 1) aren't you at a random place as described by the cards? and 2) the adventure level here is pretty low.  "At some point spill water on your partner and suggest a change of clothes" is another card. My partner and I agreed that we'd be annoyed if this were to happen. This has going for it though that Partner 1 is choosing something that Partner 2 will do, so at least they're choosing something they would like to have happen?

Where cards range from the weird/scary "A Public Restroom," "A Bathroom," "An Alley" to the mundane "A Parking Lot," "A Hallway,""A Kitchen." I think the aspect of writing a specific place to meet probably negates the need so specify whether the restroom is public or not, but there's a separate card for some reason.

Lastly, the box design. It's a slide out tray, which led to the included envelope sliding right out of the box and is now lost forever. No idea where that went. It seems like it would be an easy way to lose all of the cards too, but to my knowledge that didn't happen to me.

I would not recommend this role-playing game, but that doesn't mean that others would have the same view. I love to play card, board, and role-playing games, and perhaps that is why this one didn't work out for me as it left too much ambiguity.

I received a copy of this game from the publisher but was not required to post a positive review.

A Box of Awesome Things Matching Game by Wee Society

A Box of Awesome Things is a Matching Game for children ages three and up. It contains 20 pairs of "awesome things" to match during the game. The instructions are printed in easy to understand and explain language inside the lid of the box. It's just a normal matching game though, so the most complicated rule is that there is a blank card set that you can use to design your own "awesome thing" matching pair.

This game is a very cute idea, including little jokes about things that are not included because they're not awesome (cavities, garbage, splinters, flat tires, pink eye). The cards are sturdy cardboard and bright colors. The reverse side has a consistent white background with colorful shapes. My favorite cards were science, confetti, s'mores, trapdoors, and camouflage (truly awesome things!). I really like the way the confetti image partially obscures the word, as though it were real confetti. The camouflage card is pretty witty as well, with just a pair of eyes showing.

The back of the box says the cards are meant to spark conversation, but I found masking tape uninspiring, and also thought argyle would be a weird thing to try to teach a three year old. I was very disappointed in the picture quality of tacos and yellow. The taco is just a yellow semi-circle, with no colorful toppings or anything. Yellow is a weird half-yellow half-white box, which especially doesn't make sense when there's a pure yellow shape for taco.

I also think the box design is really poorly done. It is a flip top box, which means it would be horrible for travelling as well as would spill everywhere if it were knocked off a shelf, as a children's game is likely to have happen! The cards are snug in compartments in the box, so to get them out, you have to tip the box over, but then the divider of the box tries to come out, too.

Overall, I think it's a decent matching game and I particularly like the creative aspect of adding your own matching pair. However, I was pretty disappointed in the box design and the quality of the taco and yellow cards, specifically.

I received a copy of this game from the publisher, but was not required to post a positive review.

Review: Rewordable: The Uniquely Fragmented Word Game

I love board games/card games, and I love word games, but unfortunately, Rewordable didn't really measure up to my favorites of either distinction. 

For your turn, you play a word using cards from your hand and cards from the available pool of three cards or by adding hand cards to an existing word on the table. Points are given at the end of the game based on achieved objectives (cardboard chips for meeting goals such as playing a 7-letter word or playing a card using only yellow cards) and one point for each letter in words you own.

In the example above, I stole the words FRY and INTEND from my opponents by adding the ER card to make FRYER from my hand and by adding ING to INTEND. I also used a turn to add IN to COMING, which was my own word. You can also add letters to the middle of words as long as you're not reordering any letters.

Stealing words from opponents was fun. I also liked that you could strategically earn more than one objective chip a turn, which made for interesting challenge beyond just picking a good word to play.

However, I didn't feel that this game left enough room for creativity. I felt very limited in my options each turn. Also, because there is a common pool of cards, it was difficult to plan ahead, which led to a lot of time waiting for players to plan their moves.

I played the game twice, with four players. It can accommodate from 2-8, so it's worth noting that the game could be very different with a larger or smaller group of players. However, I'd hesitate to even attempt 8 players based on how long waiting between turns took with only four.

Overall, I was not super impressed with the game. I have a large collection of board games and card games and I can't see choosing this one over any other.

I received a copy of this game from Blogging for Books, but was not required to write a positive review.

Review: "Punderdome" Card Game

Punderdome is a creative card game for at least three pun-loving people. Players can compete as individuals or small teams, as long as there is always at least one person or team to be the "Prompter" while at least two other individuals or teams can compete in the round.


Each round begins with a warm up question, where the first team to answer with a pun that fits  receives an extra 30 seconds to come up with their pun that round.

A suggested answer is provided, but any answer that fits is accepted and encouraged.

The round itself is played with the Prompter revealing a white card and a green card with which the teams have 90 seconds to combine into a pun and write it down. The Prompter votes on the best, and the winner becomes Prompter for next round. First team to 10 round victories wins the game.

This one took me more like five minutes than 90 seconds, but I'm proud to finally say my response to this is: Kung-Fu-cianism (Confucianism). I found it quite challenging to come up with something, so I could see wanting to play in teams especially at first, though you would need at least 6 players to do even teams.

An example given in the rules is Exercising Furniture:

• You can only run sofa until you need to take a break!
• Come on in here, pull-up a chair!
• I never go to the gym--I'm more of a La-Z-Boy.

Winning the game involves choosing one of two mystery envelopes that the Host of the game has filled secretly before the game with a slip of paper that names a prize. The game suggests that one could be a good prize ("I'll buy you a drink") while one could be a rotten prize (a used napkin). A carry-over from the live game show the card game is based on, I'm sure it could be very interesting if you have great ideas for the prizes. However, as someone who plays games often, I could see it as being a hassle, a deterrent from playing, and frankly just unnecessary. Games don't need prizes to make them fun to play! I could see skipping the prize envelope entirely and just letting winning 10 rounds be the end of the game. If you had specific plans to play Punderdome, planning ahead could make the prize envelope part more fun.

This is the live game show the card game is based off.

All things considered, this could be a really fun game with the right group of creative individuals. Like any game, knowing your audience and their game preferences is important for knowing if this game would go over well. If you have a friend that is always inserting corny puns into everyday conversation like I do, you know this game would be a perfect fit.

A final note: as a game enthusiast/nerd, I have to express my appreciation that the box has dividers for keeping the two decks of cards separate. I love an organized game box.

I received a free copy of this game in exchange for my honest review.