SNAP Review – Blob Party

[Anitra] Andrew, we’ve been married a pretty long time and we’re pretty good at communicating. Most of the time.

So if I gave you a category of “Travel” and a clue of “Forest”, what would you guess as the answer?

[Andrew] My little guy, who represents me, he’s going to guess “Redwood”.

[Anitra] That was my answer, too! We matched! (squish)

This is a SNAP review for Blob Party.

Game

[Anitra] Blob Party is a party word-guessing game by Pam Walls and it’s published by WizKids.

[Andrew] You’ll need at least four people to play. The box includes supplies for eight players, but it says you can play with even more by adding some paper and pencils – and ripping the blobs apart some more. The whole game plays in 15 minutes or less.

Art

[Anitra] So Andrew, let’s talk about the fun art in this game.

[Andrew] There’s all this fun squishy dough and, obviously, these googly eyeballs. Every player gets a googly eyeball that has a matching colored player board.

[Anitra] We’ve seen a lot of games with whiteboards lately. These are…. OK. They tend to get a little hazy after a couple of uses, but they’re pretty easy to clean with a damp paper towel.

[Andrew] In this game you’ve got two kinds of cards. You have Word cards and Category cards. The graphic design is good enough to tell the two kinds apart, but honestly it’s pretty boring. The front side is just a word or two with no decorations on it. I don’t know if that’s a problem, but it’s certainly not an asset.

Mechanics

[Andrew] Let’s talk about the mechanics of Blob Party. What do these words mean? And why do we have squishy dough with googly eyeballs on it?

[Anitra] We’ll get there!

Start the game by giving every player their very own blob of dough, a whiteboard, and a matching googly eye.

[Andrew] It’s time to make a blob!

[Anitra] Flip over a Category card and a Word card. Every player will write down an answer that fits that combination. For example, if the category is MUSIC and the word is LIGHTNING, you might write “Grease” or “Bohemian Rhapsody”..

[Andrew] Or Live.

[Anitra] Yeah, depending on the age of your audience!

When everyone is ready, reveal your answers. If you matched with any other players, congratulations! Combine your blobs together into a larger blob. You’ll be working together for the rest of the game.

[Andrew] You can cooperate by showing each other written guesses and then picking one to be the representative answer for your group.

[Anitra] The goal of the game is to get the entire group into one big MEGA BLOB by the end of seven rounds.

That’s it! That’s the whole game!

Expectations

[Andrew] Anitra, let’s talk about what we expected from Blob Party.

[Anitra] I expected a simple cooperative word game, and the squishy dough part seemed fun.

[Andrew] I came into this one with absolutely no expectations; I didn’t even know what kind of game this was going to be. If you look at this box, there’s nothing on here that tells you what this game is about.

[Anitra] “Think the same. Become a blob. Win.”

Surprises

[Andrew] But we played, and there were some surprises. Anitra, you want to talk about your surprises?

[Anitra] My first one is a surprise of the mechanics [of the game] itself. It was usually pretty easy to match with one other person, but as the blobs grew into teams, it got harder and harder to match with the other teams or mega-blobs!

[Andrew] You have less options at that point. And I’ll bet that’s something they found in testing for this game, because it happened to us literally every time we played.

[Anitra] I was also really surprised at just how much fun we had making our own blobs, all of them with different personalities, and then squishing them into a multi-eyed mega-blob. It really is a wonderful motivation to make a match with other players!

[Andrew] I think the not-play-dough added enough of a tactile element to this game to, kind of, hold it together a little bit. [groan]

At it’s core this is a very simple word game, but it helped. I really liked the idea that people are matching and coming together as teams with the goal of eventually becoming one blob. Because sometimes in a cooperative game, it’s a struggle until everything finishes at the end; and this gave you small victories along the way. I actually kind of liked that.

[Anitra] It keeps the game exciting instead of making it frustrating. Usually.

Recommended?

[Andrew] Do we recommend Blob Party?

[Anitra] Blob Party is fun and fast. It’s incredibly quick to learn – we just taught you the entire game – and you’ll probably end up playing multiple games of it, especially if you have a smaller group of four or five people.

I think this is a great idea for a family gathering or a quick icebreaker game in a somewhat larger group.

[Andrew] I like the game, but I really think we need to acknowledge there’s not a lot new here. The squishy not-play dough is really kind of a gimmick, but I guess it works well.

[Anitra] Yeah, it makes the game really fun!

[Andrew] What are we going to rate Blob Party from WizKids?

[Anitra] We’re going to rate it 3½ words out of 5.

And that’s Blob Party, in a SNAP!

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Blob Party from WizKids for this review.

This post contains affiliate links, which do not change your price, but help support The Family Gamers.

SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?