Bring Your Own Book
Overall Rating: 9/10
Age: 14+
GLAM Age Range: 12-Adult
Number of Players: 3-8
Playing Time: 20 min
Publisher: Gamewright
Complexity: Low
Available At: Amazon.com
Quick Take: This game is fantastic and hilarious - as long as you pick the right kind of books to play with. Speed reading and fun one liners assist in making this game particularly enjoyable, so if you pick books that lend themselves to this you're in for a great game. And like a lot of social games (Apples to Apples, Cards Against Humanity, etc) the fun of the game is found primarily in the playing of the game, who officially wins or loses feels secondary to whoever made everyone laugh the most while you played.
How to Play: Your goal is to collect five cards first by having the other players select your book quotes as the best answers to given prompts. Everyone "brings their own book" and when given a prompt, they must quickly search through their book for a good response. When one player has found an answer, they say "I've got it" and the other players then have the duration of the timer to finish searching for their own answer. Once the time is up, each player takes turns reading their selections and the person who played the prompt card gets to select which answer they liked best. The winning answer is given the prompt card and once they have collected 5 they are the winner. Everyone passes their book to the left around the table anytime a player collects two prompt cards. Everyone should get a turn with most of if not all of the books in play.
Variations: Adapt to your audience, if you're playing with someone who hates time pressure and being rushed then you can remove the timer from the game. There are also a lot of variations listed in the official rules. Everyone can search for the prompt card and whoever is last to find a response must act as judge. Or you can have everyone vote on their favorite response instead of having the person who selected the prompt card act as the picker. You can also start the timer immediately, play with newspapers or magazines, use the cards as writing prompts, or have 20 people play at once!
Similar Games To Check Out: Codenames, Kinder Perfect, Cover Your Assets, Telestrations