Weird Things Humans Search For is a trivial like party game from publisher Big Potato. Stated to have a huge player range of 2 – 20 players the game takes around 10 minutes, though it is the style of game where you’ll want to play multiple games back to back. Weird Things Humans Search For puts your brain to the “ultimate” test. Teams are tasked with guessing what weird and wonderful things others search for in Google. However, is the fun obvious or will players be left searching? Let’s find out!
Included is a large deck of search cards, a scoring pad, answer pads and pencils. Getting everything out of the box, splitting into teams, grabbing a pencil and paper and coming up with a team name is the extent of setup. Note, while this review mostly covers playing as teams it is possible to play as individuals not teams. Played over 5 rounds the aim is simple, to gain as many points as possible.
Each round a search card is drawn. Nominating a player as the search master, that player reads out the first half of the popular search. These range from “My boss is a…” through to “Is it possible to become a…”, past the more peculiar “My child smells like…”. The teams then have some time to think before having to write down two answers. Their main answer should be their most confident answer and the one they think will be top, with a bonus answer as a backup.
Once everyone is ready, with answers written down, it is time for the reveal. Going down the list of answers on the card, players score 4 points if their main answer was the number one answer. If it isn’t top but is on the card the player gets 2 points for this main answer. Teams’ bonus answers get a single point if they appear anywhere on the list, even if it is first! This encourages players to pick and stick with what they truly think humans will be searching for most.
This process is repeated for 5 rounds. At the end of the final round the scores are totalled up and the winning team is crowned. If there is a tie at this point the two teams go into a tie breaker. The tied teams aim to guess the top answer of a bonus round card, or at least the highest answer on the card from the two teams. This continues until one team comes out of the sudden death rounds victorious.
Players are going to want to play multiple games in a row. During the first game players start to warm up and get into the experience. Answers get weirder and more wonderful – and strangely more accurate. Using a warm up game breaks down any barriers people might have about writing something that sounds silly. Mostly as nothing sounds silly or out of place once you’ve heard the answers. Going into a second game – which is maybe 5 or 10 minutes later – the game is in full swing and the enjoyment flows easier. This does mean if you only have 5 – 10 minutes it might not be the ideal game but as soon as you have 20 it’ll fit in nicely.
There aren’t many games classed as trivia where points don’t matter. Yes, there will be a winner if you follow the rules. However, Weird Things Humans Search For is a game that can be just as entertaining for those in first and last. This is one of those games that sometimes throwing points out the window and just continuing to play – or saying first to X points – lets the fun flow.
The game feels like one of the game shows seen on TV like 8 Out Of 10 Cats. In a similar vein to how contestants write and reveal their answers, Weird Things Humans Search For is crying out for some chunky white boards. Writing on a small piece of paper doesn’t have the same impact and there is very little of a reveal, merely player just read out their answer. It’s a fun factor that a game like this isn’t desperate for but it could have just elevated the experience. What may also have been a useful inclusion, for some groups, would be a short sand timer. This is a game where keeping the pace up and not taking it to seriously improves the experience – something a timer may enforce.
There is unfortunately no real way of making someone not sit out each round. Effectively the role of the search master is to facilitate the fun of others and not be involved. Trapwords, a word guessing game from CGE, came with components that cards slide into revealing only part of the card. In Weird Things Humans Search For this could be the question therefore everyone would be able to play with the answers hidden from sight for all. The positive aspect of this is an unsure player can take up this role to see how it all works, and get a grasp of the sort of answers there will be, without being thrown into the spotlight of playing.
The game can be played as individuals, though it is with teams that the game shines. Solo you only have yourself to blame if you pick incorrectly. With a teammate there is another to point the finger at in jest. Joking arguments will break out about which answer is right, and inevitably the wrong one will be selected. The game allows players to bounce off each other and it just ramps up the laughs for all involved.
Weird Things Humans Search For as the name suggests is all about those remarkably odd things that people have actually typed into a search engine. Therefore, if you have family members whom don’t really “understand” Google they may fall outside the games target demographic. For the rest of us whom use Google on a daily basis, seeing those auto-fill options, it is a simple and comical way to laugh at humanity. The game shouldn’t be taken super seriously, it is a party game designed purely for fun. Whether the points may not matter the entertainment makes the game a winner.
[Editor’s Note: Weird Things Humans Search For was provided to us by Big Potato for the review.]