It used to be a quite common occurrence that my friends and I would meet up to have games nights. Those nights had become a little more scarce lately due to family commitments & people moving far far, far far away (yes Kenny & Aly, that’s you. And as for you Rich, London?! It might as well be the other side of the moon ;p). However, when I was given the opportunity recently to review a new card-based game, I was more than willing to try and re-kindle this dying habit. Randomise sounded like my kinda game – it’s creative, fun and fast paced.

When this game arrived at my house, I was happy to see it’s a properly portable game – about double the size of a pack of cards. I loved the illustrations on the box, and the brief description on the back gave me a good idea of what was to be expected. Feeling positive, I scheduled in our games night! Games night No1 did not go to plan – if you haven’t seen people for a while, you tend to do a lot of talking… So games night No2 was booked in. With much more success 😀

There were 5 of us this particular night. Not the optimum figure for playing this game, even numbers would be best for fairness, but hey, you do what you do with the cards you’re dealt. We decided to have girls v boys. 3 girls, 2 boys. I stayed sober because I was driving, the others were in various states of inebriation. Believe me, this game is JUST as funny if you’re sober. My cheeks hurt from laughing so much.

My peppermint tea in shot there – see, totally sober!

So! How does it work? It’s basically like a mix between Pictionary and Charades. The ‘randomness’ is introduced by the things you end up being given to draw, describe or act. There are A, B and C cards. You pick one from each pile. Each card has an ‘easy’ and a ‘difficult’ section. You can choose whether to take an easy turn, or a difficult turn (more points rewarded for correct guess). In each of these sections, are listed three words. Card A will have words that describe you (ie happy, frightened, silly). Card B will have words that tell you what you are (ie giraffe, fish, astronaut). Card C will have words that tell you what you are doing (ie playing the saxaphone, digging a hole, making a fire). The opposing team picks three random numbers from one to three, and you are left with what you have to act. draw or describe. So you could end up with a frightened fish making a fire… yeah…

I won’t go into the rules and points system, I’ll just say that it’s all REALLY straight forward and we were playing straight away with no problems. We decided to play the game in every way possible and all took a turn at describing (definitely the easiest thing to do, but least funny), drawing (second easiest), and acting (hardest but also the funniest!). I would highly recommend you do the same, it’s loads funnier when you get over yourselves and act silly. We spent about 1.5 hours playing this game. We used a marker board to draw on but all you need in addition to the game is pens and paper, and someones phone to use as a timer.

I think this one was “Tall giraffe riding a surfboard”

I believe this one was “crazy rabbit doing a jigsaw puzzle”. At this point, me having got it in record time, me and Sarah were accused of some sort of paranormal communication…

I’m afraid I don’t have any videos of our appalling acting skills! What a shame! You’ll just have to give it a go yourselves 😀 I’ve got to say, I’ve not been paid or bribed in any way to give this a good review. I was simply provided with the game for the purposes of reviewing and all these views are my own. Lucky for them, I totally give it 5 stars, it will no doubt become a much loved & re-played (there are loads of ways to change it up) game of ours and I’m really happy I was given the opportunity to play it! You can grab your own Randomise game for just £9.99 on Amazon! Perfect for trips, games nights, lunchtimes at the office, dinner parties and kids sleepovers (age 8+).