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I am going to let you in on a little secret. I am the first member of my family (for at least three generations) to not own a copy of the Scrabble dictionary. Madness I know and it is a shame my parents speak of only in hushed voices and when alone. I can’t stand the Scrabble dictionary and after growing up on a diet of veg, pasta and those small lettered tiles, I can’t much stand Scrabble either.
Scrabble is a board gaming classic which most of us will have played once or twice in our time. It is a tile-based word game in which you earn points by laying whole words on a square board… unless you start the game with an x, q and z that is (in which case you aren’t laying anything my friend). It is a game highly influenced by luck and mitigated only slightly by your English GCSE grade. One person in your family will inevitably win every time and eventually you will not want to play another tile-based board game ever again.
When I was introduced to modern board games, I therefore shunned ‘Bananagrams’ and ‘A Little Wordy’ as I did not expect them to provide me with anything other than tile frustration and flashbacks of my mother annihilating me. As a result, when we were gifted Shenanigrams for Christmas you could say I was less than excited.
Out of politeness and social obligation, the small orange box covered with adorable criminal racoons finally made its way to my table and my opinion of tile based games made a very surprising and very severe U-Turn.
Unlike its predecessor, Shenanigrams leaves you hopeful rather than hopeless, devious rather than deflated, joyous rather than bored…ous as its turn requirement goes from needing to play a whole word to only needing to play ONE. SINGLE.TILE.
On your turn you can either add a tile next to a letter to continue building a word, add or insert a tile into someone else’s completed word to steal their point (let me just add an ‘s’ on the end) or be truly devious and bin a tile from your opponent’s completed word so as to replace it with a letter of your own, once again giving you the power to steal their victory - hence the criminal racoons.
Play ends when someone has the correct number of ‘tags’ for the player count and then, with a quick reset and shake of the bag, you are ready to go again.
This simplified play requirement opens the game up to all the players around the table and mitigates the issue that Scrabble had when your starting tiles were only consonants. There is a lot you can do with one tile and it is amazing how many words you can make by messing with the word bat…cat, cab, can, tan, tap, nap, naps, laps, clasp….the list really does go on. It’s great for family members of all ages as you can secure a victory with only 3 letter words if you wish to. It's also fun watching words grow and develop, when the ‘p’ you laid down originally to make into ‘pilot’ becomes ‘potatoes’ you feel as if you are in a game of chinese whispers.
Pros - So What Makes This Game So Great?
- It is quick and easy to teach. The rule ‘book’ is one small, folded piece of paper that even says halfway through “PSSST…We know rules can be boring! Feel free to just start playing and come back to the rules if you have a query.” There is even a handy QR code in case you don’t want to read that day. This game could not be easier to learn and yet that doesn’t make it dull, it is a perfect concept and so its simplicity does not dull your fun, it improves on what Scrabble started and makes the game endlessly enjoyable.
- It is quick to play. We easily fit in three rounds after dinner meaning a winner can be crowned before dessert.
- It’s pressure free. Unlike Scrabble you don’t need to be the Articulate King, it is very accessible for all players. Everyone has a real chance of winning and you can steal victory right to the end of the game. As no one player becomes the ‘clear front runner’, no one else loses interest as the game reaches its final stretch.
- It is a fantastic travel game. It is the perfect size for your handbag, small enough to play in pubs and take on holiday. You can even play it on a plane, though due to the size of those seat trays you may have to keep your words to a maximum of three letters.
- Best of all, and this was a very unexpected plus to this game, it is completely carbon neutral. As a hobby that does not require electricity, board games often slip under the radar in terms of carbon footprint. However, with shipping, plastic components, packaging and factory emissions, board games can come with a large and unspoken carbon footprint. I could not think of one game which was transparent about its carbon footprint, that is until I opened Shenanigrams. Printed on the inside of the box is Happy Yeti Games’ environmental pledge and it is certainly worth a read.
Cons - Is There Anything To Improve?
- As I am yet to come across a truly perfect game, I wanted to talk about the only con I have with Shenanigrams and that is the components. Each player receives a privacy board which is not exactly private. First of all, they are not sturdy enough to hold their shape when you fold them and secondly, for those of us taller than a cat, it is not unreasonable for your eyes to accidentally catch a glimpse of your opponent's tiles over the ‘privacy shield’. You can either use this to your ruthless advantage or find you spend the entire game shouting at your mum to “Cover your TILES!”
- As a game with only 4 sets of components (if you include the bag which holds the tiles) it would seem that 50% of these could do with work as I am also not a fan of the ‘tags’. The concept is good and is a simple way of denoting which words belong to whom, however I think more time was needed during the development stage. Firstly, they are very light and very easy to knock over if you have large, indelicate hands like me. Not only that, the transparency of these tags also proves problematic. My partner is colour blind and so we often find ourselves weighing up how friendly board games are for gamers with colour blindness. The letter tiles are crisp and clear but the tags are transparent which makes their colour unclear and makes it very difficult to see which player is in the lead.
Conclusion
Considering I am a fan of a mind bending board game which leaves me with a happy if not slightly painful headache, I never expected myself to be such a fan of this quick, easy, family-friendly game. I love getting this game out after dinner and bringing it with me on trips. I love that I now own a tile game which I can take to my mother’s and occasionally win at and, most of all, I love that no one is searching through the Scrabble dictionary to see if TWP is a word… I don't care if it’s in the Scrabble dictionary, it is NOT A WORD.
This game is inexpensive, accessible for all and enjoyable for beginners and seasoned board gamers alike. With a little work improving the components and possibly adding some fresh mechanic to add even more replayability, Shenanigrams runs the risk of being a perfect game.
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