Growing up my family played a lot of Scattergories. My
parents liked the game because it had us kids work on our vocabulary. I was
never the biggest fan of the game.
In Scattergories players each receive a folder with an answer
pad, pencil and a category card. Players agree on a category to use. One player
rolls the 20 sided die which contains the letters of the alphabet (excluding Q,
U, V, X, Y, and Z) Once the letter is rolled the timer is flipped and players
try to fill in their answer sheet according to the category card and letter.
Points are scored after the timer runs out. Each category is
read out, for instance vegetable. Players read out their answers and for each
original answer (an answer no other player has) you get a point. The answer
must start with the letter rolled. So for a B roll Broccoli, Bok Choy or Beet
would be acceptable on a vegetable category..
The game is fairly simple rules wise. It’s easy to learn and
easy to play in a group up to six people. It promotes thinking quickly and
working on your vocabulary. These are awesome points that do make me think this
is a good game.
However I am a bit of a rules lawyer and I find that since
people self score their points everyone seems to have much higher point scores
than they seemed to be getting over the course of the game. Players tend to
ignore the original answer rule and count answers that other players nullified
for them. The scoring manner of this game makes cheating very easy and what’s
the point of playing a game if you know someone is liable to cheat?
The other problem is the people I hang out with have so much
in common it’s very easy to share the same answers. So if people aren’t
cheating it ends up being a low scoring game and that gets dull too.
Finally there is a limited set of category cards. Eventually
you will start to see the same categories with the same letter rolls and the repetition
will get a little stale.
To sum up I’m not the biggest fan of Scattergories. Cheating is
way too easy and the game got a little stale for me. It is a good game for
promoting vocabulary and quick thinking to get answers before the time runs
out. While I really don’t recommend playing this game I suppose it would be
good for families with young people who want to work on vocabulary. After all I
do know people who will argue with me about how much fun this game is. It just
doesn’t do the fun for me.
