All Things Equal, Inc. Awkward Family Photos

I knew of the irreverent website when I spotted this game for half price at the mall. Since my extended family enjoys playing party board games at get-togethers, I bought it just for the heck of it. I wound up giving it to my uncle Tom for his birthday this past October, since it fell soon after I bought the game. At Thanksgiving, Tom brought it to my aunt's house and 9 us played after dinner. Three generations were playing, with ages ranged from my mom and her sibs in their mid-to-late 50s, through me, my husband and brother in our early 30s, down to 16-year-old Sammy. The game play is pretty simple, but we wound up simplifying even more by disregarding any score keeping and simply playing for laughs. We are cutthroat when it comes to Trivial Pursuit, but with games like Awkward Family Photos, the goal is to give the funniest answer, and keeping score or moving around a game board is a drag. Our "rule-relaxed" game play kept up a pace that really maximized the hysterical fun! Additionally, every round includes participation from all players, meaning there is no boring down time while you wait your turn. As a close-knit family, our submissions relied heavily on inside jokes, shared experiences, and good-natured teasing. We didn't try too hard to keep it G-rated either. ;) Memorably, we discovered that young Sammy has a sharper sense of humor than we've given him credit for. We had fun ganging up on one person after another, even those not present. Throughout the game we were laughing so loudly that the fuddy-duddies in the other room watching football kept asking what all the noise was about. Since I've only played this game with my family, I really don't know what it would be like to play with casual friends and/or acquaintances. The humor would rely on wider resources, and therefore might not be quite as hysterical as with my family 's experience. If you play with a group of friends so close-knit they are virtually a family, such as in college or with old friends who grew up together, I expect the experience would be similar to mine. However, as an ice-breaker among strangers, I really just don't know. Ultimately, I wound up buying the game for each nuclear family, so we no longer must rely on poor Tom having to schlep his game to and from gatherings at our various houses. My mom had the idea of creating additional picture cards using *our own photos*. Goodness knows we have plenty. Removing the anonymity will certainly affect the game play, but the memories may make for even greater laughs. She hasn't made these "personalized" photo game cards yet, so we must wait and see. Until then, we will keep playing Awkward Family Photos:The Game, along with our other long-time family favorites like Trivial Pursuit (multiple varieties & editions), Charades, Outburst, Sniglets, Balderdash, Scattergories, Apples to Apples, Taboo, Cranium, Win, Lose, or Draw, Dixit, Six Word Memoirs, Wits & Wagers, and more! (Cards Against Humanity is a huuuge hit amongst our friends, but amongst friends is where it will stay, and even only certain friends at that!) Awkward Family Photos is absolutely the most hysterically funny game I've played in a long time. I highly recommend it to those who like creative, subjective games, and specifically to families. We've all got some Awkward Family Photos of our own tucked away somewhere. We may laugh at the ones we see in the game or online, but deep down, we're laughing at ourselves, too. And theres nothing more fun and refreshing as sharing laughter as a family.

We loved playing this game. It is basically a series of rounds where an awkward family photo is shown and a die is rolled to decide what the rounds topic is. Some example topics are "What happened right before this picture was taken?", "If the people in this picture where in a TV show what would it be?", "What adjective best describes this photo" and so on. The play functions much like the game "apples to apples" where 1 person is the guesser and the other players submit their responses for the guesser to pick their favorite (technically, the person to the left of the guesser reads the responses, this way the guesser can't decypher each player's handwritting). This game adds that the guesser also has to guess which player made each response. If they can guess the majority correctly (# is based on # of players, ex 2 out of 3, 4 out of 5) then the guesser also gets a point. First to 5 points wins! The board is 2 sided which different pictures on each side, so plenty of game play. Also, with 20 topics in play even if you get the same picture in different games you'll most likely have a different topic. Responses can be family friendly or adults only depending on the people playing and what they can think up! Everyone had a great time and we were constantly laughing. Great game! *I might add that with some creative work on your part you can easily play this game at home without purchasing. You will need a TV or computer with internet access, go to the awkward family photos website to pull up random pictures. Then google "random number generator" and select a website(enter numbers 1 - 20) and use that instead of a dice for rolling. You can enlarge the photo on Amazon that shows the gameboard and all 20 topics which you can copy down. Get some blank pieces of paper and pencils for people to write their answers down on and you are good to go. Then play away for no cost! We are a little more sauvy than most and coded a gameboard that looks exactly like the game with our own selection of favorite photos and added special video bonus rounds! Now we can have an unlimited # of photos that we can constantly change. It also allows us to show the picture or video on our large TV so the entire room can easily view it. We sometimes found using the gameboard to be difficult for everyone to see the picture, so this solves that problem.

I bought this game prior to 4th of July, and brought it with me to play at the party. We had too many people wanting to play so we teamed up which was fun!!! It was fun listening to what people put down to describe the pictures or to say what happened next. Having a large group of people play was great...interesting comments to describe the weird pictures. I was told to bring it to the next party. It's sad to say, some of the pictures looked like pictures my family took years ago.

Great game! Love it!

Fun game that can provide some laughs with the right people. I don't think this will be a classic game that we pull out on a frequent basis, but still a good game for the occasional game night.