Karen

Welcome to Karen, the game of one star reviews! After spending some time on my gaming table will Karen manage to rate higher than one star? Displeased faces at the ready, here we go!

Preparing The Karens

Setting up a game of Karen is easy. Each player receives a star board, a pencil, a note pad and a Karen face note paper tracker. Choose a starting player and give them the question boxes. The starting player is the host for the first round and passes the question cards at the end of the turn to their right to the new host. When hosting you cannot earn points, but as this passes each turn everyone has a fair chance.

Writing The Review

The host can pick any of the 3 categories they like and read out a card from that box. The players all write down an answer on their note paper whilst the host writes down the correct answer on theirs. The host gathers all the papers together and reads them all out. Players then vote on which one is the correct answer (ie which one was a real review etc published online). You score points if you guess correctly and also when you successfully get other players to guess that your answer is the real one.

Categorically Speaking

There are three categories to play from: ‘Fill in the blanks’ where players are read out a review with a word or words missing and players must then fill in the blanks. For example ‘The water tastes like …’. The players are also told that this is a review for a Fast Food Chain.

‘What’s being reviewed’ is where the host reads out the whole review and players have to guess what is being reviewed for example ‘bought this and it didn’t come filled. Livid. Cost more to fill than it cost to buy’. Unbelievable that a paddling pool would arrive empty but there you have it!

Finally there is also the ‘Write the review’ category. This was by far the best category and the one that had us crying with laughter at points. The general consensus from all the players was that they would have enjoyed the game more had it just consisted of this category. The fill in the blanks category worked at points but just wasn’t as funny. The category that just didn’t seem to work for us was the ‘What’s being reviewed’. It just wasn’t fun enough for a party game like this.

Focusing on the ‘Write the review’ category portion of the game (and remember the host gets to pick the category each time, so you can always do what we did and keep picking this one!) and it was such fun! The more creative your friends and family, the more fun you’ll have! We all really enjoyed creating absurd short reviews and listening to what everyone had come up with. It made for some hilarious moments, ending with a few of us in tears from laughing so hard.

A Bunch Of Karens

Karen reminds me a lot of Absolute Balderdash. I have spent a lot of time playing Absolute Balderdash with some family members over the years. If you enjoy that game you would definitely enjoy Karen for a similar vibe.

On some of the ‘Write the review’ cards you had to write the manager’s response to the customer, which was interesting. I think this could have been a separate category and maybe replaced ‘What is being reviewed’.

Component wise it was a little fiddly. When you score a point you draw a displeased mouth on your Karen sheet. Each time you complete a line of these you can remove a star from your star board. When someone reaches 1 star left on their board they win. It just felt a little unnecessary. I get that it’s on theme with the one star review idea, but really you don’t need the stars and star boards, you are counting off your points just fine on the Karen face paper. By losing the stars and star boards, this could have gone into a smaller box including adding some more cards in and I would have been even happier. The Karen face notepads were really cute though.

We had a fantastic game of Karen the night before my sister’s birthday over a few glasses of wine and I will definitely be cracking it out at Christmas again. Luckily Karen definitely rated higher than one star for us!

If you’re looking for a fun Christmas party game where all you need to play is a bit of creativity and a sense of humour then this could be the perfect game to find under your tree this year!