Cranium

games.us/files/2009/03/cranium.jpg" alt="Cranium" width="220" height="219" />Cranium is a great fun party game provided the participants aren’t too shy because it requires a lot of performance from the players and challenges you to show off various skills. It is a board game which is essentially like a combination of elements from lots of other popular board games. It was billed as a game for your whole brain because it combines challenges in four categories.

Players divide into teams and you need at least four players making two teams of two to play. You roll a dice to move on the board with the aim of reaching the center first and you have to take cards each turn which challenge you to perform an activity. The cards are divided into four packs with different types of tasks. The categories are Creative Cat (artistic), Data Head (knowledge), Word Worm (language) and Star Performer (performance).

The Creative Cat category has three types of challenges, drawing with your eyes closed, sculpting from putty and drawing clues which team mates must guess. Data Head is basically quiz questions, multiple choice and true or false statements. Word Worm has spelling forwards and backwards, definitions, anagrams and hangman. Star Performer includes charades, acting as a famous person or character (no speech allowed) and whistling or humming a famous tune.

Depending on the cards sometimes the challenges are open to any team to solve. Teams only get to move when they complete their card successfully and once in the middle they have to get one of each card before the other teams decide on their final challenge.

There is no doubt that the game doesn’t feature much originality, all of the basic concepts and ideas can be traced to other board games from Pictionary to Trivial Pursuit but the combination is a lot of fun. It generally only takes around an hour to play a game and you can compete with as many as 16 players. It usually provides a few moments of hilarity and because there are so many different types of challenge there is usually something which appeals to everyone. Although by the same token there will be something that everyone dreads doing.

Cranium was developed by two friends, Whit Alexander and Richard Tait, back in 1997. They both worked for Microsoft for a number of years but were keen to start up their own business. Tait came up with the idea after spending a weekend playing various games with friends where he found different people were typically dominant at different games and he thought it would be good to create something that was more inclusive and would give everyone a chance. He managed to persuade Alexander it was a good idea and in 1998 the game was the best Christmas seller on Amazon. It has continued to sell well the two creators have released various new editions over the years.

It probably isn’t really ideal for young kids, teenagers and older will get the most from this. It makes a good fun party game for drunken adults and seems to lead to fewer arguments than many other board games. It is also good because no one gets knocked out at any stage so there is no wait for the rest to finish.