Review on 🎮 PlayMonster Utter Nonsense - The Crazy Game of Voices and Accents: Ridiculous Family Fun! Ages 8+, 4-20 Players (Red) by Richard Rosa

This game is simple. There are two types of cards - phrase cards and language cards. Each player is dealt 7 cards with phrases, and one person is appointed as the judge in each round. The referee draws a voice card (e.g. startled, slow motion, auctioneer, rapper) and the players read their sentence in that voice. The referee announces the winner and the game ends when someone has won 5 rounds. There's nothing special about that. It's like charades and really all you need are charade cards (or any number of free apps) to play this game. Even if you play with children, they may not be familiar with many of these phrases and characters. The sentences were clearly written by an older man. For example, my kids had no idea who Journey (the band), Doogie Hauser or Derek Hough was. There are also some cultural and regional jokes here that were unfamiliar to my children. : Yeezy (they don't listen), Prince (they were kids when he left), Vanilla Ice (I was a kid when he was popular lol they don't know him), Lemon Pledge, Applebees, In & Out Burger (not in our area), swedish fish (sweets) etc. So this isn't a quiz game, you don't need to know what those things are to play or win. And of course you can explain things along the way (like who Doogie Howser is). But it's not much fun playing a game where you don't know what half of those things are, or in situations where the context of the card can help you with the vote (like if you drew a rapper's voting card have, it would help to know what the Prince was a singer and Ice Cube a rapper). I had to sort through the cards to make sure the game was up to date and not disappointing and ended up putting about half the cards aside. It seems that this game would be perfect for preschoolers, but the flashcards just aren't written for them. Even if your child was aware of these cultural references, the reading level should be at least that of first or second grade. I'm educated so I'm used to changing and fixing things to suit the audience and your particular situation. So there are many simple things you can do to change this game. One idea is to keep the voting card secret by making it difficult for the game to guess which vote you are representing. You can upload a list of your own voices or your own phrases. Or you can draw a language card but let the child choose a phrase or page from their favorite book. When ordering I thought it could be used by families and teachers of special needs children to help them open up a little. Experiment a little with public speaking and voices. Unfortunately, it will take a lot of effort to adapt it for this purpose. However, this can be a great group exercise for high school drama students. Another disadvantage of the game is that there is only one referee for each round. This means that it really takes 4 players to get the game to work. If there were only 3 players, each round would just be a duel between two people. I just don't like the idea of a referee - we changed the game so that each round is a group vote, so everyone participates. We voted anonymously and you cannot vote for yourself. Then if you're playing with kids and they have to skip a round (ie don't understand the cards) then they can be the sole referee for that round. So it's good for a silly time and we had some fun, but it's not the most entertaining game and it didn't turn out to be as fun as we thought it would be. And since then the kids haven't asked for it (while they ask for Uno, Rako, Harry Potter Clue and others almost every night). I think adults would have more fun in a crazy mood or in a drunken game. And finally I find that it is a bit expensive. It's only 3 decks - no board, no chips, no timer, etc. - so the $20+ price seems a bit high.