It's called the Chicago Toy and Game Fair, but there's more than just kids' stuff at the annual two-day spectacle-held last weekend at the Navy Pier.
Many creators and publishers of adult-friendly board and card games come to ChiTAG to show off their new fun-filled inventions in hopes that they might catch someone's eye and become the next "Scrabble" or "Cards Against Humanity." RedEye strolled the show floor to find out what games had the most potential to become your next favorite bar activity or party favor.
Query the Game
WHAT IT IS: "Query" is a true analog game for a digital age. It's filled with physical objects like cards and markers and dry erase boards, but it's all about the Internet. More specifically, players guess an Internet search engine's autocomplete results for a variety of random phrases. If you draw the card that begins with "Is it dangerous to ...", for example, you must come up with one of the top ways Google tries to finish it for you based on popular searches (in this case, it's "to eat moldy bread,""wake a sleepwalker" and "swallow gum.") Players earn points by voting for the correct answer over their friends' wild conjecture-it's like "Family Feud" meets "Balderdash."
This might sound like an idea concocted by tech nerds in Silicon Valley, but "Query" was created on a whim by Phoebe Stephens and Nikki Flowerday-two sisters living in Toronto. "We chat a lot and we'd test each other on funny Google autocompletes we found," Stephens said. "Eventually, we thought, hey, maybe this could be a game?"
WHY IT'S COOL: It's a fresh twist on an old formula that hilariously shows the bizarre and random way the Internet thinks.
Selfie: The Game of Silly Expressions
WHAT IT IS: Snapping a ducklipped photo of yourself is usually a solo gig, but one new board game transforms the selfie into a group activity. In "Selfie," players are dealt a hand of seven cards-each containing prompts like "You got caught picking your nose" or "someone put a fish in the microwave." You then take a picture that tries to convey the feeling of the card and show it to your opponents. They select a card from their hand that might be most suitable and-more often-most hilarious to match the expression. Think "Apples to Apples" if combined with Instagram.
Cindy Saylor, marketing manager for "Selfie" distributor USAopoly, initially expected the game to appeal mostly to teens. "But we found out that a lot of 20- and 30-somethings love to take selfies too," Saylor said.
WHY IT'S COOL: The name is a little off-putting-you can probably hear the deep sighs of your friends when you ask them to play a board game called "Selfie"-but it's amusing once you give in to the conceit.
LOUD ABOUT: A GAME OF ACTION MEMORY
WHAT IT IS: Games of "Loud About" get silly and, yes, loud-extremely fast. It's a card game for three to eight players in which each participant invents a quick action and a corresponding sound or word based on hundreds of different categories. One of six cards (all of which are hipster-themed) are flipped on the table, and if there's a match between two players, they race to act and yell out their opponent's identity first.
Creator Jeff Lai, who just launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for "Loud About" on Saturday, said the game has emerged as a popular drinking game at bars he's tested it at in Canada. "Well, it's just really fun to yell out some of this stuff out at a bar," Lai said. "You have a category like celebrities you dislike and shout 'Kim Kardashian!' and it gets ridiculous and awesome."
WHY IT'S COOL: There's very little set-up involved and the rules are blazingly fast to learn. You can get the gist of "Loud About" in about the time it takes to do a shot.