With summer holidays around the corner, you like me are probably ready to put your feet up and rest? Maybe you and your significant other/s might be planning on some down time right? Well we all know that this could bring about fun and adventure but equally the simmering fears of boredom, dullness and sleep! Well we have been sent GOOD FACE,BAD FACE by those lovely people at Big Potato games to review and see if this might avoid all of that horrid stuff and make for fun and frolics!
GOOD FACE / BAD FACE
Players 2-5 / Ages 8+ / Time 10 minutes
GAME
The idea is essentially simple enough. Players need to get four good faces in front of them. To do this, you get shuffled cards at the start, take one and then pass it onto your neighbour. They can choose to turn one over (revealing a good and its in the win pile, reveal a bad and its all gone and back to the start!)
Firstly you need to set up. With a handy card to instruct you , you can put the right amount of cards for the right amount of players. So its a mix of Yellow good cards and Red Bad cards to those dealt out.
Then you deal. The first player looks at their cards and then pass it to their neighbour. Once all players have either drawn (if its a yellow then you can draw again. A red and it must be passed and the card stays with you if no yellows are in front of you) it returns to its owner and that round is over. Second player goes etc. Until four yellows are drawn! This video explains it really well!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzVXfyAltV0
REVIEW
Big Potato describe GOOD FACE BAD FACE as follows ‘Quick to learn, easy to play. The perfect game to play with your friends and family.’ We played this over the course of a week. Needing to make sure to really test it and then see if it holds up. GOOD FACE BAD FACE is a tale of three cities. Poor analogy but stick with me. City one is the easy going one. Its rules city. These are easy enough to learn. The simple blend of push your luck, turn or pass and the action of each after draw is well rounded and defined. So easy to learn and fun to play.
Then you have city to. The less fun place. Like Las Vegas. This is the family factor.In some places it feels like someone might have desired to overcomplicate the mechanic and succeeded. You see the whole hold and drop system is a little less robust than it seems. So for some kids it might be better for a less stressful starter game. City three is 1920s Chicago. Jazz and drinks. Its easy to play except that is for drinking games, where it is not friendly due to the flip and flop of the draw and hold and the rather erratic nature of any push your luck type game.
So my rating 8/10
