Quick Facts:
Cranium. Board game, 4-8 players, teams of 2 needed. Trivia/Creative. Ages 12 and up, priced about $25 at the time of this writing.

Full Review:

I know I am a little slow on the uptake, but sometimes it takes me a while to get around to playing and reviewing good games like this. But my basic feeling is, if a product is something I spend several hours doing, then it is certainly worth spending some time writing my feelings on it.

Cranium is a board game that is a few years old at this point, and chances are, you've heard of it. If you haven't, and this review is the first time you've heard of the game, then yay for me. It is kind of like pictionary. charades and trivial pursuit thrown together with a pile of play-doh - and some word games tacked on for good measure. It sounds more complicated than it is, the game is really very simple.

Cranium played with teams of 2, up to 8 players total. Your goal is to answer questions or perform tasks out of four different categories: Word Worm (Word Games), Data Head (Trivia), Creative Cat (drawing/sculpting), and Star Performer (Cherades/Acting/Mime). You start off on a "brain" piece, and choose your favorite category. Most of the tasks have a one minute timer on them. If you answer the question right (or your opponent guesses whatever you are drawing/sculpting/acting), you roll a die and move to the corresponding color (each category has a color) along the fast track, along the inside of the board. If you fail in your task, you lose your turn, and when you DO get one right, you'll move along the slow track on the outside of the board until you get to the next brain pit-stop area. Eventually you'll work your way to the center cranium, where you'll try to answer one question from each category, then then a final question from a category of your choosing from the center of the board. Whichever team does this first, wins!

The only time the game deviates from this formula is when someone pulls a "Club Cranium" card. These are questions/tasks like all the others, but have the "Club Cranium" stamp on them, which means all the teams get to participate. Whichever team gets the question right gets a bonus roll of the die.

And there you have your basic gameplay. It's pretty simple. The questions and tasks are mostly easy, though some can be quite challenging. There are a limited number of them, so after a few games, especially if you are playing with other people who own/have played Cranium, some will get reptitious, and unfortunately, there are some staples. For example, if someone pulls the "Act like Marilyn Monroe" Star Performer card, you can be assured to hear, "Happy Birthday Mr. President". Like any other trivia game, the players themselves will determine if a question/task is hard or easy. The other night, Imelda Marcos came up in the Acting card, and no one by myself knew who Imelda Marcos was. A Walt Disney question came up, and we had one super Walt Disney fanatic in the room.

I think most of the fun of Cranium comes with the sculpting/charades/drawing tasks. Sculpting is always good for some silly answers, (Everything looks like a hot dog when you first start using the play-doh) the drawing is usually fun because well, most people can't draw very well, and some of them require you to have your eyes closed. The Charades style questions are among the toughest in the game, as you can't gesture or nod as in Charades, you just have to act out the part and hope your partner guesses it. Some of these are VERY difficult, like "Bicycle Messenger", and others can be quite fun. I had "Walking the Plank" the other night, and proceeded to hop slowly with my hands behind my back, then I flung myself to the ground and squirmed and made drowning motions, and my partner definitely guessed it at as time was running out, perhaps my favorite Cranium moment. (Go Jay!)

But it is a great group game, for couples, friends, or families, and offers enough variety to keep things interesting. The game itself is very short, so rematches are easy to do.

My complaints on the game are minor: Questions will get repeated/memorized, though there is an expansion pack to solve this. The Club Cranium rules are a TAD vague, especially when people are in the center cranium trying to answer one question of each category. The rules could have been a little more detailed here. And finally, the game can be a tad unforgiving. While a FEW of the tasks/questions are tough, MOST are medium to easy. So if you are unlucky to get a stumper early, it could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

What I liked:

Fun variety of tasks.

Anything with play-doh has to be cool.

Easy to play.

What I didn't like:

You will run out of/repeat certain questions.

The club Cranium rules are a tad confusing.

Getting a question wrong can be the kiss of death.

Overall:

Really, it seems like Cranium was a no-brainer to design. Take a bunch of popular games, put them together into one fun package, and viola - hit board game. And that's what you have. If you can get 4 people together for gaming pretty regularly, you're going to want to have this one in your game cabinet, just like people had their Trivial Pursuit and Scattegories ten years ago. It's short, it is fun, and it is a good time for all involved. You're going to want to grab the expansion though.

Mr_D

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 29,99
Type of Toy: Game
Age Range of Child: 9 Years or Older