Jenga: Truth or Dare? Monotonous At Best
Written: Oct 30 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good for a few laughs at first
Cons: Not enough questions or dares, gets boring quick.
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| Paladia's Full Review: Jenga |
I hosted a party this past weekend. As the hour grew late and the party wound down, I found myself surrounded by several of my night-owl friends who’d stayed to talk. Someone mentioned playing a game, and without hesitation my husband broke out the new Jenga: Truth or Dare we’d just picked up during the week.
*Note*-This is for the Truth or Dare version of Jenga, which has been submitted to Epinions for addition to their database. This epinion will be moved once it's added.
The Rules
Jenga: Truth or Dare is almost exactly like the original Jenga. The rules are basically the same; make a tower with the blocks, take turns removing a block and placing it on top (without toppling it) and so on, until the tower is so unstable it’s impossible to carry out your turn without causing a catastrophe. You knock the tower down-you lose. It’s as simple as that. The twist with this version is that the blocks are colored: red, black or brown. Red blocks have dares written on them, black have a truth question scribed on the side, and the brown blocks are left blank, giving other players the opportunity to make the player who pulls that color do a dare or answer a truth question they’ve made up. Sample dares were things like, ‘spin around 10 times fast’, or ‘kiss the person on your left’. Very simple stuff, with the truth questions being along the lines of, ‘what’s your biggest fear’, or ‘what’s the most fun you’ve had in a car?’. (While these questions are pretty light-weight, I'd suggest using caution for the teen age-group...it's along the lines of spin-the-bottle.)
Big Fun?
Standing in the store reading the side of the box was all it took to hook me. It sounded like such a great idea and a great way to get conversations going. Thoughts of tipsy people in party mode trying to find a steady hand while removing blocks ran through my head, with visions of crazy dares being carried out and guests spilling their heart and soul at the prompting of a truth question were a plus. Oh, the possibilities! Like many things, in theory it sounded great, in practice – no.
Steady
Using a steady hand seemed pretty easy for everyone; we’re all familiar with Jenga anyway. The real downfall of the game lies with the number of questions and dares. There are only so many blocks to a tower, and therefore only so many questions or dares you can ask. Some people dislike dares and will do almost anything to keep from pulling a red block, including lose the game intentionally by pulling out a block that obviously will topple it. Besides, once you’ve answered a truth question, it’s not much fun to get that same question again on the next tower set-up. We all heard your juicy confession with the last question; it’s old news by now. These very things made it monotonous after a couple of rounds. We kept unknowingly pulling the same blocks and getting the same questions and dares.
Room for Improvement
The game could’ve been greatly improved if it came with a deck of cards (think Trivial Pursuit) and each block had a corresponding number or color to match the cards. That would give players more questions or dares to ask. The wild card aspect of the game seemed like fun at first, meaning if a player pulled a brown block we all got to make up the truth question or the dare. My circle of friends is quite creative and outgoing, but even they ran out of ideas after a while, feeling on the spot as it was.
The Bottom Line
It took about 3 tower set-ups for this game to become a chore to play. We soon lost interest and decided to play cards instead. I was greatly disappointed after having such high hopes for the game. We didn’t even want to pretend it was a regular Jenga game afterward. The kicker is this game costs $6 more than the original, and the only difference is 2/3rds of the blocks are colored with writing on them. Not hardly worth it.
Save your money and buy Taboo, Outburst or the original Jenga instead.
Thank you for reading!
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
Paladia
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Location: Mount Juliet TN
Reviews written: 59
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