Cranium Review

Cranium  — 

Yesterday my mom, sister, aunt and I finally broke out the Cranium game I had bought years ago.  We never played it because I had friends who told me it was too complicated and I always thought no one would want to learn.  Well last night we finally gave it a try and I'm here to show you just how easy it can be!  We cut out a few of the rules and it really is quite easy to get started.

Getting started:

1. Place your pieces for each team on the first purple Brain spot. 
2. Team 1 gets to pick from any of the 4 colors to start (explained below)
3. Team 1 has to correctly accomplish the task on the card before the timer runs out
4. If Team 1 gets it accomplished, they roll the dice and move ahead to a colored square, repeating this until they get one wrong
5. If Team 1 doesn't get it done, it's teams 2 turn

In addition to the above, there is a Fast Track and a Slow Track.  If you get the first question right while standing on the brain, you get to take the Fast Track shortcut.  Otherwise you are stuck taking the slow track.  There are 4 brains on the board so you have 4 chances to take a shortcut ahead of everyone else.

The Colors:

• Red = Data Head = These are trivia questions such as multiple choice, true or false or just answering a question.
• Blue = Creative Cat = pictionary type questions, using the modeling clay to build something, or drawing with your eyes closed
• Yellow = Word Worm = spelling questions, filling in the blanks and other things to do with words
• Green = Star Performer = acting like a famous person, humming a tune or charades

For each card, you are given a task and your goal is to get your teammate to correctly guess the answer or what you are doing.  the trivia questions are done as a team and you can discuss what you want to answer.

As you can see, this is more than just a trivia game!
Cranium gives you the best things from all your favorite games - drawing, acting, and trivia all combined.  It really mixes it up as each colored set has it's own set of different types of tasks to complete.  It gives an equal advantage to everyone since, even if someone is really good at trivia, they might not be good at another one of the colors. 

The only problems we had was when we really didn't know who the people were we were supposed to be portraying or in some cases didn't know what the song was that we were supposed to be humming.  We wrote this down as the luck of the draw!  My mom wanted to switch cards after pulling "Sweet Emotion (Aerosmith)" but we said NO because my sister and I got stuck with "Julia Childs" for one of ours and I had no idea who that was!  So obviously some are going to be easier for you then others based on who you know.  This made it so we were stuck on one color for awhile and cannot move forward in the game, but also made it more fair as no one team could fly through the whole board with ease.

What we left out:
To make things easier, we left a few things out.  First, there is some cards stamped with a brain and when you pick one of these, everyone is supposed to play, and then the winning team gets to steal the turn.  While this may be fun for those more familiar with gameplay, I found it to be too complicated so we just ignored it.

We also decided that whoever got to the end would only have to complete 1 card in order to win.  The game has it where you are supposed to stay in the center until you get a question correct for all 4 colors, but that could take forever if you are stuck on one color forever.

Overall:
This game worked great for the 4 of us and I don't think I'd play with too many people at once because it would make it hard.  You do tend to go through certain card colors quickly if you are stuck on one spot for awhile.  You can buy new cards online though, so if you are playing with the same people a lot you may have to do this.  There are other options for this game too.  We said if we ever were bored with the board, we would instead just use the cards and give ourselves points for getting questions correct. 

The game is mostly fun because of the variety.  It's not just trivia, it's not charades, it's not pictionary, it's everything all in one.  It's best for adults as many kids wouldn't know a lot of the people and songs listed.  I bet you never thought you would be asked to draw a picture with your eyes closed!  After this gets old, I would definitely look into the other varieties of Cranium that are available.  Enjoy!!