"EAT, YELLOW, CIRCLE — do you mean pancakes? Or pineapple rings? Oh wait, the CIRCLE is DIVIDED? So something that you eat that is yellow and semicircular? Uh, is it, maybe…a banana?" "Yes, the answer is banana! One point for the Blue Team!"
In the communication game Word Slam, two teams compete against one another simultaneously. In each round, one player on each team tries to get their teammates to guess a hidden word or phrase using only the 105 explanatory cards available in the box. Speaking and acting is forbidden! They must tell their stories using only 105 cards, each with one word on it: a noun, verb, adjective, or preposition. A player can use as many explanatory cards as desired, and whichever team guesses correctly first scores a point. The team with the most points at the end of the game wins!
Word Slam Family features the same gameplay as the original Word Slam in a compact format. This version includes 100 story word cards and 100 answer cards with a total of 600 answer terms. The answer cards are divided into seven categories, unlike in the original game.
In this version, the die and timer is replaced by an app. Instead of using card holders, the two box halves are used as screens between the teams, and the answer cards are played behind the screens. Word Slam Family can be played as both an expansion to the base game and a standalone game.
- Great next step in word games
- One of my favorite party games
- Love the frantic tension
- Team-based word guessing
- Codenames
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- racing — Both teams are racing to guess the same thing first.
- Word Game — One person on each team tries to get their team to guess something using word cards.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- It's called I Know Mia.
- It's about Mia being murdered.
- It's just one card, you know, so it's very easy to set up.
- You scan the QR code to go to the crime scene, you scan the QR code to talk to the people involved.
- It's essentially like a board game version of a point-and-click adventure game.
- You have to work together to complete the missions.
- It's just a deck of cards, you know, no real board.
- It's basically the same game as The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, but with a few tweaks.