Reviews: Jenga & Taboo (Platinum)
Party games
Jenga
Remove a block from the middle of the stack,
and add it to the top. Watch your tower grow ludicrously tall
and less and less stable.
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Players: any (1 or more!)
Time: approx. 20 min
Publisher: Hasbro/Milton Bradley
Price: around $12
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This party game consists of 54 identical wooden rectangular blocks,
and one page of instructions. That's it. To start the game, stack
the blocks into a tower of 18 levels (three blocks to a level).
On your turn, remove one block from the structure and add it to
the top. You may only use one hand, but you are allowed to prod
blocks before choosing one to find one that is loose (as the tower
grows, the weight rests in weird ways). When someone causes the
tower to fall, the person who played before them--i.e. the last
player to successfully move a block--wins.
That's all there is to it. Jenga has absolutely no player interaction
(unless you want to be friendly and allow advice, or mean-spirited
and allow trash-talking), the potential for nerve-wracking tension,
and lots of down time when it isn't your turn, as the moves get
trickier and the other players get more cautious.
And yet somehow this game works. There's something fascinating
about watching the tower extend. The structure often more than doubles
its original height! It's almost as if the players are working on
a cooperative effort. And not only does the game truly work well
with any number of players (even by yourself!), it's quite easy
for someone who's not enjoying the experience to quit--or an onlooker
to join in--mid-game without a need to start over. I can think of
only a handful of games where this is possible, and it's always
good to have a few around.
Though I personally prefer the straightforward original Jenga,
it spawned several spinoff games worth mentioning:
Throw 'n Go Jenga has painted blocks in three colors and Watto's
fate cube--I mean, a 6-sided die with a color on each face. In this
version, you roll the die at the start of your turn, and are only
permitted to move a block that matches the color you rolled. This
randomly eliminates 2/3 of your choices each turn, and to me makes
the game less fun.
Jenga Truth-or-Dare has 18 "dare" blocks, 18 "truth"
blocks, 18 blank blocks, which you can leave blank or mark with
your own fiendish imaginings. When you move a block, you must read
it, and then you can follow its instructions, or you may pass, but
then you must obey the next block you pull. (Sample truths: What
was your most embarrassing moment in school, have you ever left
the house without underwear and if so why; sample dares: imitate
someone in the room, say something romantic to the person next to
you) The stress of moving blocks is increased by the stress of doing
something goofy or revealing something intimate about yourself.
At least you stop playing when the tower falls--to my recollection,
most games of Truth-or-Dare last for the whole slumber party.
There's also something called Jenga Jacks, which came out in 2002
and had such a short shelf life nobody knows it ever existed. The
jacks are on cards, not little metal caltrops, and the goal of the
game was to empty your hand of cards by moving matching blocks.
A nice thing about Throw 'n Go, Truth-or-Dare, and Jenga Jacks
is that you can ignore the extra rules and just play the standard
game. I suppose you could also paint your basic Jenga set into any
of the spinoff versions, or even create your own.
UNO Stacko (not to be confused with UNO Blitzo) is made by Mattel,
and has only 45 blocks, but otherwise is a Jenga clone. For this
manifestation, the pieces you move are governed by numbers and colors,
following the pattern of the UNO card game. If the previous moved
brick was a green 4, the brick you choose must either be another
4 or be green. Limiting each player's options causes some very agonizing
decisions, but also allows some strategy to trap your opponents
(Ha! If I move that red 3, Julie will have to move that blue 3 at
the edge, or one of the red bricks waaay at the bottom!) It's not
all stratagem, however: the game is lightened up with the familiar
UNO madness of draw two, skip, reverse, and wild blocks. My biggest
complaint about UNO Stacko is that the pieces are hollow, girder-like
plastic, which makes the tower far less forgiving than a Jenga tower.
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And just when you thought you'd seen it all, here comes Jenga
Xtreme. It's the most intense Jenga ever, because of the big
X in the name. The blocks in this latest incarnation are slanted
parallelograms, with nary a right angle to be found. In addition
to the inherent instability of the growing gaps, a Jenga Xtreme
tower will zig-zag like a lightning bolt. Whenever a new level
is started on top, the placing player gets to choose which
direction to force the lean, either toward or away from the
center of gravity. Are you going for more stability or greater
precariousness?
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Whatever its form, Jenga is a kind of living sculpture, certainly
attractive for its shape and shades of wood, but more beautiful
for its tenuous balance and proof of the tenacity of gravity. It
is an incredibly easy game to begin, requiring almost no rules explanation.
Several times I have simply placed the tower on a table while folks
are talking, and the game will begin, while the conversation continues.
Some purists may call Jenga an activity instead of a game, since
the only strategy is "make it fall on someone else's turn."
To them I point out how infectiously fun it is, and that there are
dozens of dexterity/balancing structure games out there, including
Villa
Paletti, which won the Spiel des Jahres in 2002!
Even if you hate this kind of game, odds are you'll have people
over at your house sometime who'll have a blast playing. With so
many flavors of Jenga to choose from, just grab one, and keep it
handy in the game closet!
What's to like: Quick to explain, can entertain a large
group.
Be warned: Steady hands (and nerves) a must!
Buy Jenga
Electronic Taboo Platinum Edition
Can you get your team to
guess "cactus" when you
can't say plant, desert,
needle, saguaro, or
roadrunner? This new
edition of a classic party
game belongs in everyone's
game closet!
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Players: 2 teams
Time: 30-45 min
Publisher: Hasbro/Milton Bradley
Price: $40 (get it on sale!)
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The original Taboo was published in 1989, and was one of the better
creations from the Scattegories-Pictionary era of word party games.
In a limited amount of time, get your teammates to guess a specific
object, person, or concept, ala Charades. But unlike its predecessor,
which prohibits all language, taboo only bars you from saying the
words of the guess phrase, and five listed "taboo words".
For example, you may need to communicate "pillow" without
"soft" "head" "sleep" "feather"
and "fight." Gestures, soundalikes, sound effects, and
musical cues are also prohibited.
A Taboo expansion followed, and a second edition appeared in 2000.
This snazzy battery-powered LED edition came out in 2001, and is
the pinnacle of evolution of the series, bringing the game into
the post-Who Wants to Be a Millionaire era. At first glance, it
might seem that your extra bucks and batteries just get you flashing
lights and mood music. But Electronic Taboo: Platinum Edition is
more than just gimmick and gloss.
The game is a sleek all-in-one unit, combining the cards, timer,
and scorepad from the original set into what looks like a Star Trek
tricorder. The only separate piece is the buzzer, which does the
job of alerting the players to a mistake without grating on the
nerves (I've seen near-murders over the annoying buzzer from the
original Taboo). The game's brain contains 2200 words (the original
had 504 cards with a word on each side, so 1008 in total). A nice
addition is the ability to scale the difficulty by choosing the
number of unspeakable words per clue, either three, five (the standard),
or seven.
There is no visual countdown for how long you have to guess. Your
only cue is the cheery, new age music that speeds up as time winds
down. If the music bugs you, you can turn off the sound, but then
you'll have no idea how long you have. (the sixty seconds each turn
lasts sure seems shorter when you're giving clues and sure seems
longer when the other team is guessing!) If you panic and hit the
wrong button during play, or a dispute arises over whether a taboo
word was spoken or not, each round has a review and correct function,
a very nice touch.
Taboo is a very accessible, "jump-right-in" game, and
the Electronic Edition makes it much easier to start playing. Like
Pringles, once you open it, people can't seem to get enough of it.
Oddly enough, the game has no "off" switch, going to sleep
only after being left alone for several minutes. There are other
limitations to the electronic unit: The number of rounds in a game
can only be 4, 6, or 8, and the game only allows two teams. You
can certainly play longer, or with three teams, but you'll need
to have some scorekeepers. The word selection is indeed random from
the game's little chip-brain, which is both good and bad. The original
Taboo uses cards, which takes extra time to draw and discard during
the game (as well as a longer set up and clean up). But with cards,
once you put a card down, it's not going to come up again until
you reshuffle it. The electronic gizmo "reshuffles" after
every game. So if you play several times in one night (and as mentioned,
I've yet to play only one game a night), odds are you're going to
have a repeat or three. I've never had a word come up more than
once during a single game, though.
when you pass or say a taboo word, the other team gets a point.
Play can get to a point mid-game where one team cannot possibly
catch up to the other. If a "gold" edition ever comes
out, I'd love to see a few houserule scoring options, with a way
for the trailing team to go for broke. Again, nothing to stop you
from getting out paper and pencil and scoring your own way.
Finally, Taboo can be a very high-stress activity, and each team
will have weaker members and stronger members. When clue-giver and
guessers are not communicating,
The game
What's to like: Very involving, rewards quick wits and thinking
outside the box.
Be warned: The suggested retail is $40 (though you can find
it on sale), loud to play, people who hate intense under-pressure-in-the-spotlight
games will hate this.
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