Card's Against Humanity

The next game I’d like to take a closer look at is Card’s Against Humanity.

While technically not a board game, I feel this game is worth looking over. In recent years, the card game apples to apples has worked its way deep into the hearts of gamers and non-gamers alike. To explain it briefly, are given a hand of 7 proper nouns – from things ranging from Rice to Anne Frank – and told to place a card which most closely matches a particular adjective placed in the middle. One player is chosen as a judge for that round, and – without knowing who placed what card – has to judge which fits the best. This goes on generally until players get bored and want to do something else, without much concern for who won or lost. Generally a decent, non-competitive party game.

 However, in all my experiences, there seems to be a tendency towards…the obscene. People tend to pick things with less emphasis on how well they mesh, but rather with the idea of trying to draw out the most offensive thing possible in the mind of the judge. In apples to apples, Pol Pat would likely be described as “Adorable”, the holocaust as “Hilarious”. Or just lewdness ensues, to the best of the player’s ability within the containments of the game.

What if you took out all of the inconspicuous Nouns which make up the body of Apples and replaced them with some of the weirdest and nastiest things you can imagine? And what if the adjectives were equally obscene? You’d probably end up with something like Card’s against Humanity.

Originally funded on Kickstarter, the game operates within the same framework as Apples to Apples. It manages to avoid the pitfall of simply becoming a dirty version of the same game by implementing more complex and hilariously depraved cards. As opposed to restraining itself to adjectives and nouns, the game includes everything from phrases to actions to specific groups. From “The Jews” to “Pooping back and forth, forever”, the game covers everything. And game even does interesting things with  the “adjective card”, replacing them with two main types of cards – Haikus (which prompt the player to place three cards in respond to try to build continuity)  and Fill in the blanks, which are self-explanatory. Overall, the rest of the game is played the same, and is easy for new players to pick up.

The good thing about this game is that it is a more complex, dirtier version of apples to apples. The bad thing about this game is, cliché as it is to say, the same exact reason. In the end, the game, for all it’s inherent hilarity, is still no greater than the sum of it’s parts. Despite that, it’s still one of the more interesting party games I’ve seen in a long time, and worth trying if you can ever get your hands on it.

You can buy Cards Against Humanity from their website http://cardsagainsthumanity.com/ . Currently the base game is sold out, but if you have the patience and a couple of friends you can (like me) legally print out the game and make it yourself. 

Edit 1: Made some minor corrections pointed out by commentators. Thanks!

I've thought a bit about the idea of creating something similar to cards against humanity, but I never imagined that in implementation it could be so enjoyable, though somewhat repetitive. The horrible things that players come up with are occasionally legitimately hilarious, and by the end players bond through shared depravity. The first time I played it for several hours with a small group of friends it was an instant hit. When I brought my crummy hand-made copy to my universities gaming convention it was surprisingly popular, nearly half the admittedly small  number of attendees playing. Overall, despite it's crudeness, i'd recommend this game to anyone looking for a simple party game which, while not unique, is unique in it's simple depravity.