Put your skills of persuasion to the test! Friendly Skeleton Games (Fantastic Factories, MonsDRAWsity) presents It’s Obvious, the perfect way to keep arguments friendly and impersonal instead of letting them destroy every relationship you have. Designed by Jay Bucciarelli, this game will put you on your toes when you have to defend your position (whether or not you really believe it) and convince everyone else that you’re telling the truth.
What’s In The Box?
- Rulebook
- 3 decks of question cards
- 8 black vote cards
- 8 white vote cards
- 1 tiebreak card
- A secret, sixth thing (1 custom question board)
How to Play
First, the group picks a Host and gives them the tiebreak card. The Host has the power to decide the Obvious Choice in case of a tie, and they also have the power to end the debate round of the game and choose who will be eliminated if the group is stuck in a tie between two players.
One of each color of voting card is distributed to the rest of the players, and the deck of question cards is shuffled. The Host then picks a question card and reads it aloud, and each player votes by putting the white or black card facedown near the question card. The Host also picks a choice but keeps it secret unless there is a tie, in which case their choice influences the tiebreak.
After all of the players vote, the Host shuffles all of the vote cards and reveals the Obvious Choice (side with the most votes) and the Oblivious Choice (side with the least votes). Unless everyone votes unanimously, the players enter the Debate round of the game where they all defend their position in the group that made the Obvious Choice. It is up to everyone to try and convince the group that they are a part of the majority while also trying to figure out who made the Oblivious choice.
Once the debating is over (or the Host has cut everyone off from the argument juice), the Elimination round begins. Players raise their fingers during the debate round to signal that they know who they want to eliminate, and once most people have raised a finger, everyone points at who they think is lying and did, in fact, make the Oblivious Choice. If the players correctly identify someone, the debate round resumes until they think they have found another person in the minority. If the group wrongly picks someone in the majority, the round is over, and the Oblivious Team wins. If the majority finds all of the people who chose the Oblivious Choice, the Obvious Team wins.
The Verdict?
It’s Obvious is a wonderfully easy game to get the hang of, and anyone who loves to argue for the fun of it will have a great time. The art from Blake Stevenson is absolutely adorable and it brings exactly the right vibe to the fun you’ll have. The rule booklet is very straightforward and even has a chart on the back to help you out in a pinch if you get confused. The question cards range from simple things like “Chocolate or Vanilla” to things that could cause someone to storm out of your house like “Tennis Balls are Yellow or Tennis Balls are Green”. The custom question board opens up a whole world of new questions too, and the chaos you can unravel with that is absolutely unrivaled.
Overall, It’s Obvious is great fun, and we can only hope that there will be expansions to the question deck someday so that we never run out of things to quarrel over.
You can pre-order It’s Obvious at the Friendly Skeleton shop for $14.95.
Images and review copy courtesy of Friendly Skeleton
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