POETRY FOR NEANDERTHALS
Designer: Francesca Slade & David Matthews | Publisher: Exploding Kittens
On first inspection, Poetry for Neanderthals seems a lot like the mass-market favourite Taboo. Each round sees one player take on the role of a cave-dwelling poet, drawing cards from a deck showing different words and short phrases and attempting to get their teammates to guess them. It’s a familiar party game premise, but here it comes with a twist: to help your teammates, you’ll only be able to use words of one syllable.
It’s harder than it sounds. How would you describe a sand castle using only the shortest words in your vocabulary? Maybe: “Big stone place where knights live, but made of beach stuff.” What about a winter break? “Leave home when it’s cold and fly off to hot place for a while.” The severe restrictions on how you can communicate mean you need to be creative, and with a sand timer relentlessly trickling down as you play, you also need to think on your feet.
It’s about as straightforward a concept as you’ll find anywhere in gaming, but it comes with one or two added elements to give it some depth and flavour. Each card in the game comes with easy and tough options to attempt, worth one or three points respectively. Then there’s the inflatable wooden club included in the box which you can use to bash anyone who uses an extra syllable. It’s an optional extra – one shamelessly lifted from the 2009 game Ugg-Tect – but if your group doesn’t object, it adds something to the atmosphere.
OWEN DUFFY