Punderdome

Here is my first review of a non-book: Punderdome, a card game. The creators say the objective is to make the most groan-worthy pun, although if I were the host, I’d give higher points to the most clever pun – sometimes puns are cheap or overused, so usually the less predictable is better, in my opinion. If you’ve watched a show like @midnight, you’ve seen the instantaneousness of pun generating (of course, those are professional comedians) – so 90 seconds, or 120 if you won the first round, might be a little long, but in that time you can come up with several puns and choose the one you like best. Having bad jokes on each card could help keep the players in a punderous state of mind, and there is a card of “just for pun!” examples if more inspiration is needed. While mostly a card game, there is the addition of two mystery envelopes, keeping with the game-show vibe. If you don’t have anything on hand to give away, I think it’d be just as funny to write something imaginary that would make a bad – or good – prize. I like the suggestion of having one awesome prize in one envelope and something terrible in the other. And depending on who you’re playing with, something that could go either way – say a CD of Yanni’s “Greatest Hits.”

Everything fits in a nice box, which is smaller than I expected (approximately 3.5 x 5.5 x 2.5 inches), but it’s all nice and portable, and a good design for keeping everything organized. You do have to provide your own pen or pencil, and there’s no space to keep one in the box, and if you want to stick to the rules you’ll need a timer, but otherwise everything you need is included. One thing I think could make a slight improvement has to do with the reverse side of the cards. One set are the white cards, the other set are the green cards, but on the reverse, they both share colors, either pink, orange, yellow, blue or black. It might be better if the white set had just one color on the back, and the green set had one other color on the flip side. Aside from that, I think this will be a very fun game for pun lovers to enjoy.

Note: I received this through BloggingForBooks in exchange for an honest review.