(Full Disclosure: Robots and Red Tape provided Nerdbloggers with a mock-up, preview copy of their game. We received no payment or compensation for this preview and find the act of writing paid previews pretty scuzzy).
The Game: Questionable Fun
Click the image to go to the Kickstarter page
The Pitch: From the Kickstarter description: “A thought-provoking party game where creativity wins points, not luck. If you’re not laughing when you play, you’re doing it wrong.”
Game Play: Players take turns as judge, reading aloud from cards questions meant to provoke interesting and, hopefully, funny answers. Once the answers are written down, they are passed to a reader who reads them aloud. The judge picks his favorite and rewards the winner with a point. The judging shifts to the next player. That is it. As far as a rules set goes, this is as simple and obvious as it gets.
My Take: What you are paying for when you back or buy Questionable Fun is basically a giant deck of cards loaded with questions. It is a very basic parlor game that replicates what happens when a bunch of creative people at a party start throwing hypothetical questions at each other and attempts to turn that activity into a game. This shouldn't be much of a problem if you are a person who enjoys games like Cards Against Humanity, where you are also just paying for the creativity of the design team, not the components. The question for any parlour game that attempts to turn a party activity into a commercial game is does the game offer enough to justify not just skipping the game and coming up with content for yourself? It is the Eat Poop Your Cat versus Telestrations or Celebrity versus Time's Up argument. Here, I think Questionable Fun is more like Time's Up, in that it does offer the player content that they likely couldn't come up with themselves in the spur of the moment. At the very least, it is like inviting a bunch of creative and funny people in to your party without having to provide them with beer. Some of the questions we played provoked hilarious responses from our players. For the sake of clarity, here are some examples of the questions:
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“The Person to my right is a world-famous exotic dancer. What is the name of his or her signature move”
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“I Invented a new drug that cures baldness. What terrible side effect does it have?”
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“The person to my right left their laptop open. What is the most embarrassing web page in their history?”
As you may have guessed from the above questions, Questionable Fun, like Cards Against Humanity, is decidedly an adult party game. I'm sure is would be possible to pull out a subset of cards to play with younger folk, but the game is at its best when it is raunchy and free form.
A certain segment of my game group really likes party/parlour games. This was the group I played Questionable Fun with, and we had a great time with it. If the game was a category in a new version of Beyond Balderdash, it would be right at home with the best categories. On its own, I think it comes down to how much a game of this type appeals to you and your game group. It is something I would like on my shelf to pull out and mix in with Time's Up, Cards Against Humanity, and Say Anything. I think the quality of the questions--their improv comedy feel-- gives the game value and makes it a worthwhile project.
The Kickstarter Project has about two weeks left. If you are a fan of party games designed for almost no other purpose than causing raucous laughter, then I recommend you go check them out and help the funding along as you see fit.