Have A Blockbuster Game Night

A name you haven’t heard of in a long time, right? Did you time jump back to the days of khakis and blue polos? Wait, that’s probably just me having worked at one through my senior year of college. Regardless, you miss going in at five minutes to midnight on a Friday night to casually stroll along the new release wall. You were judged by the way.

Big Potato Games has resurrected the 90s staple in the form of a party game. They’ve combined Family Feud, charades, and word association together. This may sound a bit much and maybe a little complicated. Stick with me it will be worth it.

As a side note, and I don’t know if this was their intent or not. But Big Potato Games captured the feeling of fielding questions from behind the counter with this mashup of games.

“You know that movie,” one hand waving as if the title could be pulled from the air. “It had that guy I love him. It had those cars.” Both hands now engaged in miming a steering wheel. “It was a heist movie.” The phantom wheel replaced with a finger pistol.

Fast and the Furious? Gone in Sixty Seconds? The Italian Job? Bullit?

Anyway, you don’t have to be a die-hard movie junkie to play this game. It can help, but it’s not required. You do need a minimum of four people to play the game as you need a teammate for the second half of gameplay.

The overall objective of the game is to collect a movie card from each of the seven movie genres. There are two phases of each round. During the first phase, a player from each team face-off, and a card is revealed. An example card would read, movies with dogs. The timer starts after a player calls out the first title that fits the bill and hits the buzzer. Their opponent then has fifteen seconds to come up with their own movie and tap the buzzer.

This continues until the timer runs out. The team that tapped the buzzer last gets control of the next phase of the game. Six cards are drawn from the second pile of cards. These have actual movie titles on them. The person who won the head to head gets to select which three to keep and which three to hand to the opposing side. As the game goes on, this is a significant strategic point.

The players with cards will then have to decide which movie they will use only a single word to describe, which movie they’ll quote from and which movie they’ll act out. One thing to note about quoting films, you don’t have to get an exact quote, you just have to make it sound like one.

Each movie guessed successfully gets to go in your collection to work towards the end goal of having a card from each genre. If your team is amazeballs and gets all three in the time limit, you can move on to the opposing team’s cards.

The gameplay is quick to pick up and combines a lot of elements from game night staples. Highly accessible to the young and old. And it allows all members of the team to shine.

I’m always daunted by a full game of charades because my miming is subpar and I feel like I’m going to let my team down. But with the lightning rounds, I can make up for the sad mine that I am.

We were cracking up laughing during the lightning rounds thanks to the mental freeze we were all falling victim to. Granted, we didn’t open the box until after 9 at night, so that’s to be expected. That was my favorite part of the game. Honestly, I would be up for playing just that part of the game over and over.

Pretty sure your best bet to pick up this gem is at Target. And yes, the box is made to look like the old VHS boxes. Anyone with younger kids will get the added bonus of describing the analog way of renting movies.

And remember Nerd Girls, be kind, rewind.