Some games exist to challenge the mind, taxing all of your synapses as you plan, construct, and strategize your way to victory through mazes of resources and unit pieces.
Other games exist for you to exert your influence, wielding your cunning and poltical clout like a manipulative medieval lord.
Still others inject you into a myriad of thematic settings, each providing its own narrative in a manner that’s as simple or as complex as the game intends.
And then there are games like this one.
The Premise
Premise is a strong concept here. In theory, players attempt to win by playing wacky and random cards to eliminate other players. Sometimes this happens. More often than not, it doesn’t. The winning part that is.
The Rules
We Didn’t Playtest This is a fast, chaotic, and short affair, consisting of a single deck of cards. To begin, each player is simply dealt two cards. The starting player is determined as randomly and arbitrarily as possible.
Each player takes their turn in the same manner. First, they draw a card. Then, they play a card. Cards in We Didn’t Playtest This consist of a wide variety of effects, such as forcing players to pick numbers, avoid saying certain words, or deal with the impact of dragons, zombies, and powerful lasers.
When a player uses a card, simply follows the card’s directions. The results usually cause one or more players to be immediately eliminated from the game. Then, the next surviving player takes their turn.
Turns continue until only one player (or no players) remain standing. That player wins the game. They are bestowed the title of Luckiest Person of the Last Five Minutes and should be praised for the highly cerebral ability to read basic card text.
Always Getting Arrowed
Social games get a bad rap among the more serious gaming crowds, as they approach gaming from a starkly different perspective than their more hefty counterparts. Instead of a plethora of pieces and rules, these games focus on just two things: entertainment value and social interaction. Everything else becomes secondary. Rules, strategy – even the desire to win – can take a back seat to creating a simple and engaging game setting.
It’s a numbers game.
This holds true here as well. Even as social games go, We Didn’t Playtest This is about as simple as they come. The game can be explained in seconds, which is helpful since it could just as easily be over in that time frame. Indeed, playthroughs of We Didn’t Playtest This are incredibly short, averaging a whopping five minutes per game.
This is due to that any card played, including the very first, could also be the last one. For instance, there are cards with conditional “you win if” statements, and if you meet its criteria when you play it, say by it being the month of your birthday, or you’re the only female still alive, or you’re the shortest one there, then you win. Done. Over. Congrats.
Moreover, like most party games, the time span to play is completely independent of the number of players involved. We Didn’t Playtest This can easily manage a dozen players or more. (Odds are the first few cards played will eliminate half of them anyway.) This high degree of player accessibility, along with being just a tad longer than just playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, makes this a game that Socializers will undoubtedly appreciate.
Also, there are a number of cards that make everyone play Rock, Paper, Scissors.
Now, a haiku, for no reason.
Along For The Ride
Bananas are important.
Forget approaching We Didn’t Playtest This with any semblance of strategy. Or even cohesive thought. Instead, just strap in, grab a banana, put on a tiny hat, and see whether you’re destined for a black hole or to be a victim of ninja attacks. The fun factor in We Didn’t Playtest This At All is from the wide variety of cards generating a riotous atmosphere. Perhaps the card you play will eliminate five players, or none. Or maybe it backfires on you entirely! For Daredevils, playing We Didn’t Playtest This will be like having a card-based sugar high, as the game is incredibly unpredictable, and anything is possible.
That said, the game has limits. It’s charming when played for a few matches, but players tend to wear out its welcome by playing it too long in one sitting. Instead, it’s better served in small doses. We recommend doing either a preset number of rounds or a reasonably short time period to play this. The game’s novelty can wane if you try to stretch it into something more than it intends to be; it is not designed to be a substantive game by any means. It already lacks any of the qualifications that Tacticians and Architects seek in a game, and aside from some marvelously ludicrous flavor text, there is nothing for Immersionists to latch on to either.
Yes, it’s best to approach We Didn’t Playtest This the way it wants you to: with wild abandon until something else shiny catches your attention. If you approach this game with any intent other than to enjoy a few rounds of wacky situational fun, you will be disappointed. Ergo, Strikers will be disappointed.
The Takeaway
We Didn’t Playtest This is effectively one part party game and one part exercise in organized chaos. Game sessions are designed to be irreverent, silly, and short, and through that lens, this game succeeds in wonderfully ridiculous ways. It’s an ideal game for any decently-sized group to start off an evening’s activities, to wind them down, or simply if players have a few minutes to kill. It is furiously quick, the epitome of random, and it’s accessible to a lot of different people, making it a worthwhile social game. However, it should also be played judiciously, as even with a decent array of different cards, the game’s appeal will dwindle if it’s used too much in one session.
Game Over, man.
We Didn’t Playtest This At All is a product of Asmadi Games.
Cardboard Republic Snapshot Scoring (Based on scale of 5):
Artwork: N/A
Rules Clarity: 5
Replay Value: 3.5
Physical Quality: 4.5
Overall Score: 4