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GameTime Magazine
Issue #4 August 1999
Joyce Greenholdt
USA
| Cost: |
$19.95 |
| Number
of players: |
Four to 10 (or more) |
| Designed
for ages: |
10 and up |
| Game
Length: |
20-30 minutes per game |
| Learning
curve: |
Onlookers can get the basics just
by watching a hand or two; reading the rules takes
less than five minutes. |
| Ease
of Play: |
Simple but elegant rules make the
game go quickly. After a game or two, players seldom
if ever need to look up rules during a game. |
| Strife
factor: |
Very low. While players may disagree
over a particular hand, no one hand is so important
as to cause major arguments. Besides, the judge's
decision is arbitrary and final- and that's part
of the fun, too. |
Out of the Box is a small company that
made its debut last year with the boardgame Bosworth,
a chess variant for two to four players. The company
topped itself this spring with the release of Apples
to Apples, a card game that's so simple,
elegant, and flexible that it's
hard to believe no one thought of it years ago.
Each player gets a hand of "red apple"
cards printed with the names of assorted things, places,
people, and events. A different player acts as the judge
for each hand. The judge turns over the top "green apple"
card, which has an adjective on it. Players must quickly
decide which of their red apples is best described by
the green apple card and slap it, face down, on the
table. The judge gathers the cards, shuffles them so
as to remain ignorant of which card was supplied by
which player, and decides which red apple card is the
best match for the green apple. The person who threw
in the winning red apple keeps the green card, which
is worth one point. Since cards are used both for playing
and keeping score, you don't need anything else to play
the game.
The game comes with a plastic card shoe
containing two stacks of red cards and one of green
cards - more than 400 cards altogether, ensuring plenty
of variety in each game. A few blank cards are included,
so that owners can customize the game, and Out of the
Box has plans for expansion decks and decks of blank
card to further increase the possible combinations.
In addition, the company has plans for a junior version
of game for ages 7 through 12.
The cards themselves are sturdy, with a
functional design that makes it easy to keep track of
a hand of seven cards, while giving a brief description
or definition of what's on the card, in case a player
has never been to, say, a Quentin Tarantino movie. The
cards all have square corners, which may mike it easier
to snatch one from a handful to play, but it does make
shuffling them kind of a prickly task. Another niggling
annoyance was that a few cards had typos: Tarantino,
Mahatma Gandhi, and Whoopi Goldberg were misspelled,
for instance, and all could have been looked up easily.
Apart from that, the game is excellent
- even addictive. When it arrived at our offices, we
tried it out during a 15-minute break. Average attendance
at our break table has nearly doubled since then, as
people got curious, gave it a try, and got hooked. A
quarter of an hour usually isn't long enough for a full
game, but that's OK. The game is so flexible, people
can leave or join a game that's in progress, and whoever
has the most green cards after 15 minutes is declared
the winner. It's playing the game that's most of the
fun, not winning.
As a party game, Apples
to Apples excels. A key point in winning any
hand is playing to the judge, and, if you don't know
your fellow players very well, you'll soon learn more
about them. Cards can come up in outrageously funny
combinations (and are sometimes just outrageous). And,
when nobody has a really good match for the green card,
players can lobby the judge, "just pointing out" how
this or that card is more appropriate or totally wrong.
It's a very social game that appeals to
a wide group of people. Don't be surprised if you're
soon seeing it in major mass-market chains as well as
specialty game stores. Apples to
Apples has the kind of appeal that could make
it a "breakout" game.
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