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About a month and a half ago, I had an upcoming party to go to with the folks at the Circus HQ, and so when I coincidentally got an email from "Krackie Krackades" (no shit, that was the email address) to review the new game, Krackades Mini, I figured it would be a good game to play at the party. In essence, it's a party game that is dirty as hell, much like Cards Against Humanity is, but this is much more of a game, where Cards Against Humanity is really more of an activity than a game. We played it three times, per the Circus rules, and while the first time was really fun, it very quickly lost its ability to entertain, much to our disappointment.
The game itself is nothing more than a deck of kind-of-ugly cards with four suits; you need to supply your own paper, pen, and Play-Doh, which is one thing that you regular readers know that I truly fucking despise. If you sell me a game, I don't want to have to go to the store to get extra shit. Anyhow, the four suits are "act", "draw", "sculpt", and "Krack Attack"; it's a sort of design portmanteau of "Charades", "Cranium", and "Telestrations" in that people use acting, drawing, and sculpting to elicit the content of the cards so that their teammates can guess what the card says. The first three suits are pretty self-explanatory, but the last are cards that teams can use to alter other team's efforts, such as making them perform their card standing on one leg, or with their eyes closed. As it turns out, it's a one-play wonder, in that as long as you follow a key rule that I'll get into later, it will be a really good time, but not because of the design as much as the looks on people's faces when they realize what it is that you're trying to act out, draw, or sculpt.
Now, these are not even remotely guessable unless you are a total degenerate, or in other words, if you're like me. For instance, one card asks you to sculpt a "big penis vein", while another card asks you to act out "99 problems but a bitch ain't one". Some are genuinely funny, such as drawing something representing an "asian glow", but some are just reaching. In short, it's a mixed bag, and with the right crowd you can have a good time. This is definitely the kind of game that you break out when your friends and their spouses are around and everyone's had a couple shots of bourbon. The amount of fun you'll have is directly proportional to the level of debauchery that precedes it, and the utter sickness of mind of the participants.
The magic to making this game last for more than one session is to be sure that nobody has seen the cards in advance so that they really have to guess, rather than have it be sort of a raunchy, multiple-choice game. It was hard for me to play because I looked at some of the cards, which gave me a huge advantage, since guessing "doggy style" isn't as hard when you know the card is in the deck. I only looked at a couple of each to get an idea of what to expect, so I limited my bias, and I suggest that you don't even look at the cards when you get it so that you don't ruin it for yourself.
I have to admit, the biggest downside of the design is that the best part of the game is the reveal if your teammate doesn't guess it, since the laughs abound at that point. Once you've seen all of the cards, the game loses all of its humor, and really, all of the fun, so you literally can only play this once or twice with the same people and expect it to be anything but a total waste of time. In short, this is the epitome of an "experience game", one that you play once and talk about for months, but won't be able to recapture the original magic on replay. The first time we played it someone literally spit out a mouthful of beer all over the table and damned near drowned because they were laughing so hard. The second time was notably less fun because we had seen almost all of the cards, and a lot of the shine had faded because of it. The third time we played it, it was a lot more sighs than laughs, and I refuse to play it again because of this experience.
Now, the game retails on Amazon for $13.00, so it's cheap enough to get you past the fact that this is a one-time game, and we had such a fun time with it the first time we played that I wholly recommend it. You'll notice that there's no pictures here, which is odd, and I did this specifically for the reason I mentioned - the less you know about the game, the better, so you can enjoy it fully the first time you play. It had an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign a while back, and I can understand that there's a limited market for it, but I think this game would actually be a great $25.00 party game, especially since the Kickstarter version (not to be confused with the subject of this review, the mini version) was actually a full game that contained all the required parts, and had a lot more cards. As I said, these two points were the only drawbacks to the currently available Krackades Mini, so honestly, the Kickstarter version would've been a really, really good party game for people with sick minds.
Why Krackades Mini Overdoses On Awesome:
- Sick, filthy fun, with a dash of backstabbing, make this a great party game
- Simple rules make this a game that isn't hard to explain at all, especially when wasted
- It supports huge crowds, so you have no upper limit on players
- Two words: KRACK ATTACK
Why "Krackades Mini" Is How One Describes An HIV+ Midget Crack Whore:
- You need to buy extra materials in order to play, especially if you have no young kids
- If you look at the cards before playing, you ruin the game
- You have to have at least 8 people to make this worth playing
- There's not enough cards to support three full sessions with the same people
- The art is about two steps above stick figures
- There's very little that's novel about the design
Overall:
I'd totally buy this if I had a party to go to and I knew that I'd only play it once or twice with the same crew, and also, the crew is pretty open to "irreverent humor" (read: crass, lewd humor). If you're looking for a long-term party game like Wits and Wagers, but grimy, that you can play for dozens of weekends at barbecues, this isn't the game. The price point is perfect, though, for that one-time experience if that's your goal.
Rating:
3/5 Stars
Learn more here:
http://krackades.com/
You kind of have to see this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9ua6WU6K1c
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