Review: Scrawl (Party Game) – Ingenious, Comedic, Fun

Luke June 21, 2017 3 Comments

Scrawl is the love child of Chinese Whispers and Cards Against Humanity.

That’s it. Thanks for reading this review. Have a nice day.

THE PREMISE OF SCRAWL

Scrawl is an incredibly simple, incredibly wonderful, incredibly enlightening party game designed by Big Potato games. It involves taking a card, reading what it is on the card, and drawing it on a small whiteboard. This is then passed to the person to the left (or right, it really doesn’t matter) to place another (thinner) whiteboard on top. The person the board is passed to then tries and guess (in words) what was drawn and pass it on.

The next person pins on a thin board again, and draws what the second person wrote. They then pass it on to the next person who writes what the third person drew, and so on and so forth.

Then you end up with a story that looks like this:

“Gorilla Panic” turning into “Hitch-Hiking Wookie”

Yep, from which we can gather that none of us know how to draw gorillas, big foot, or yetis. Our Wookies are pretty good though, so we have that going for us.

At the end of the round there is a point scoring system, where if the whiteboard says the same thing as the card once it has been around everyone it is one point, and then each player can choose one point for the best guess or drawing. That being said, the competitive nature is purely optional. Instead, we tend to do what the Hot Potato team suggested to us at the UK Games Expo and ignore the rules all together.

It is worth noting that the cards are NOT suitable for children or those with a gentle disposition. Examples of the cards include:

Gorilla Panic
Freestyling Kazoo Soloist
Tasering a Sloth
Mr Floppy

QUALITY AND COMPONENTS OF SCRAWL

Scrawl is a good looking game. Each player gets their own whiteboard, and each has a groovy drawing on the back to easily be able to differentiate them from one another. The cards themselves have four things written on them, split into different colours. This allows for you, as the player, to pick from the phrases in the “green”, “pink”, “white”, or “black” sections within a game.

The game comes with whiteboard pens, wipes, and a shedload of the thinner sheets to ensure there are plenty to go around. There are butterfly clips that are also provided to hold the sheets in place. All in all, it is a very well made and good looking game.

WHAT IS IT LIKE PLAYING SCRAWL?

Scrawl. What can we say about Scrawl? Well…a few nights ago we played it with friends and laughed so hard we thought one of them had a hernia. It is incredibly fun and addictive, with so much going for it as a party game.

What is nice is that it creates a judgement-free zone. Games like Scrawl and Cards Against Humanity force players to step outside of their comfort zones, thereby bringing everyone together. Unlike Cards Against, however, there was a lot less “I don’t know what this means” and more doodling. The drawing aspect is really nice, as it adds something else to the game. What’s more, it really doesn’t matter how good you are at drawing. Everyone can have fun, no matter what their level of artistic ability. In fact, the game is arguably even more fun when you can’t draw.

Scrawl is a great game and drawing adds an extra dimension. Unlike with Cards Against, where we found we knew all the cards by the forth play through, Scrawl has a longer life span. The turnover of cards is lower, there is more on each card, and the drawing adds so much more. It doesn’t matter if you had “A Slow Day in the Box Factory” last game as, this time around, you may draw it differently and someone else may guess it differently. Kudos to Big Potato on the game.

VERDICT FOR SCRAWL

We have played this a few times now and laugh harder and harder each time we play. It leaves us emotionally exhausted, but what an amazing game it is. It is really fun with the right group of people; however, it has the potential to be even more fun with the wrong group of people. An awesome game all round.

You can buy Scrawl on Amazon for the price of £20.