For this critical play I played Cards Against Humanity. It is for adults, 18+, and was created by a group of high school students funded by a kickstart. The names of the creators are Max Temkin, Josh Dillon, Ben Hantoot, David Munk, Daniel Dranove, Eli Halpern, Eliot Weinstein, and David Pinsof. It is known for its raunchy and sometimes problematic cards, but also for how fun it is. I would agree with the general public on this one. Cards Against Humanity has very few mechanics that only create very few dynamics, but the play to theme creates an insane amount of fun, mainly in the form of fellowship and expression. I will also argue that there is a great challenge aspect of the game created by the dynamics that wouldn’t seem as apparent as the others. Overall, playing this game was exciting, hilarious, frustrating and satisfying all at the same time, and no one had to even explain to me how to play.
Starting off with the mechanics, this game is simple. There are black cards with mad-lib style fill in the blanks, and white cards with absurd, graphic, gross, or politically incorrect nouns and verbs and short phrases. That is literally it. There is also the goal though: there is one judge who reads out the black card, then once all players have put down their funny input cards, the judge chooses their favorite sentence. This is where the game gets interesting. The cards themselves have a wide range of possibilities, from “dead parents” to “a powerpoint presentation” to “making the penises kiss.” When you are playing, you really need to cater towards whoever is judging, otherwise you will never get any points.
This dynamic of customizing card combinations to a specific judge created by the wide range of cards leads to a lot of fellowship. One person might not necessarily think one combination of cards is that funny, but to another person it could be the greatest combination of all time. This game forces people to get to know their friends’ raunchiest senses of humor, which I do not think any other game has done. I also think that the fact that the cards themselves are scandalous force people to expose this personal, perhaps vulnerable side of their humor, which creates deeper fellowship connections than a game like Apples to Apples would. Playing an offensive card is risky, but can have high reward if it gets a lot of laughs or if it wins the round. This might have just been for me, but when I got laughs out of a risky card it made me feel really comfortable with the people I was with and I felt accepted and appreciated for my dark sense of humor. In this way the game also elicits a type of expression of fun. When you express your sense of humor, people can take that as ammunition to fuel the next rounds. It makes the game funnier and the players happier.
I also want to quickly comment on the design. I think black and white cards were a great choice. It adds to the irony of the game. The cards look sleek, professional, and mature (and honestly kind of boring) on the outside, but on the inside they are just effed up completely. It is almost like a cute metaphor for learning people’s weird senses of humor like I mentioned before- you would never know unless you play the game.
Once everyone’s senses of humor are figured out, the challenging fun comes into play. Going back to the concept of a wide variety of cards, there can sometimes be rounds where you have to just ditch a stupid or difficult card because it is just not funny enough. On the flip side, there is a dynamic where if you have a really funny white card, it might be funny with a lot of black cards, but you might want to save it for a real kicker. This actually leads to a lot of regrets that makes people more hungry for better cards and funnier jokes which creates more competition.
Obviously one could argue that the issue with this game is that there are many situations where cards can make you go “ooo….yikes?” instead of laughing. With this game, it is really hard to help that. There are many opportunities for abuse, but that is the risk of making a “politically incorrect” game. I think that in the end, it is notorious, so at least players have an idea of what they are getting into. All in all, I think Cards Against Humanity is a unique and funny game that can be played over and over again and still be just as good.
