Apples to Apples is undoubtedly one of the best party games of all time. It can be taught in less than two minutes to a gaggle of eight-year-olds or to a mob of drunken college kids at a frat party. The surprising thing is that both of these groups will have fun with the game, though the former might find Apples to Apples Junior, which was released in 2002, a bit easier to play.
Apples to Apples rivals Taboo, Trivial Pursuit, and Guesstures for simplicity, but it’s different from these earlier blockbusters. Those earlier party games are built around a skill that people can get good at. For this reason, there is a certain competitiveness that comes out during play. So while these games are fun, they can make some players feel inadequate if they’re not good at the required skill. That’s not the case with Apples to Apples and the new genre of party games that has increasingly come to the market over the past decade.
This new type of party games focuses on getting to know the other players and fun interaction, instead of competition. It includes Loaded Questions (1997), Imaginiff (1998), What Were You Thinking? (1998), Things. . . (2002), Attribute (2002), Faces (2005), and my own Say Anything (co-designed with Satish Pillalamarri, 2008). Although Apples to Apples was not the first of this new style to be released, it is the simplest and least intimidating of the bunch. This means it accomplishes the goal of getting people laughing and having a good time more quickly than any of the other titles mentioned.
Let me briefly explain how to play Apples to Apples. The game comes with hundreds of cards and nothing else. No pawns, no dice, and no board! 25 percent of these cards have an adjective written on them and 75 percent have a noun writ- ten on them. When it is your turn, you are the judge. You flip over the next adjec- tive card and place it face up on the table. This card will say something descriptive like saintly, phony, dangerous, or idiotic. Everyone else reviews their hand of seven noun cards, which will have things on them like Americans, rock concert, snow,or Beethoven. The goal is to select the noun that best fits the adjective and place it face down on the table. The judge shuffles the noun cards so that he or she doesn’t know who played each one, then reads the cards one by one. While the judge is deciding, the other players are encouraged to lobby for or against any of the submitted cards, and it’s often here where the game’s most enjoyable interac- tion occurs. The judge is the final arbiter, though. Whoever submitted the winning card gets one point. The person to the left of the judge becomes the new judge, and another round is played.
As far as I know, Apples to Apples was the first game to use the judge mechanic. While I dislike innovation for novelty’s sake, I am extra impressed when innovation accompanies a design that works this well. It inspires a childlike won- der in me when I encounter something unique for the first time. Since the release of Apples to Apples, the judge mechanic has been used in hundreds of other games internationally, including, I should note, Say Anything.
Of all the party games in this new genre, it could be argued that Apples to Apples demands the least amount of skill, but this doesn’t mean it’s the least fun to play. On the contrary, this helps keep the atmosphere light. Instead of concentrat- ing on winning points, players are relaxed enough to interact and joke around. I once played a game of Apples to Apples with a group of friends and a dog named Sassafras. This was done by submitting a random noun card each turn for the dog. Not only was Sassafras a very competitive player, he ended up winning! It makes me laugh every time I think about this story. Not many board games exist that can create a story good enough to tell your friends, not to mention write about 10 years later. That Apples to Apples can accomplish this with so few rules is where its greatness lies.
There’s an interesting story behind the design of Apples to Apples.
At a luncheon with his in-laws in 1996, Matt Kirby was trying to draw people into the conversation by asking some comparative questions, like which writer was better, Hemingway or Fitzgerald? He then switched out better for more profound, and soon found himself shifting the things being compared. Before long, he was asking more unusual questions. What was more profound, James Joyce or a Corvette? Which was more useful, a toaster or Picasso? The comparison questions led to some interesting discussions and Matt realized it might make the foundation for a good game.
He called that design Apples to Oranges, and it consisted of a board with squares that prompted players to compare certain subjects to an adjective, using cards similar to the ones in the game’s final version. Each square also introduced variations for how subject cards were selected, who would be doing the comparing, and methods for tallying the score. The movement mechanism was a patented die with arrows on it, which Matt called the Arrowdie.
Anxiously he shipped off the prototype to Hasbro, Mattel, and every other game company that would consider it. No one was interested. Finally, at the 1998 Origins Game Fair, he pitched his creation to the recently formed Out of the Box. Sales manager Al Waller arranged for Matt to play the game with several Out of the Box staffers at the Hyatt’s Big Bar on Two, once the show floor closed. Reaction to the design’s core concept was good, but the variations introduced by the different squares were not as well received.
Mark Osterhaus, the founder of Out of the Box, recognized the problem. He picked up the board and the Arrowdie and the other components, everything except the cards, and moved them aside. “Let’s just play with these,” he said, pointing to the only remaining components. And the rest is history.
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