Big Potato Games – Party Game Review Special

Introduction

If you don’t know the name Big Potato, there’s a good chance you’ve seen, and maybe played, at least one of their games. Don’t Get Got? Obama Llama? The Chameleon? Herd Mentality? Over here in the UK, you can even find their games adorning the shelves of supermarkets and bookshops. With that kind of ubiquity, there might be a part of you that wonders if they’re actually any good, and more importantly, worth spending your hard-earned pennies on.

Wonder no more! The rather wonderful people at Big Potato Games sent me a selection of their games to play, so I made the most of the Christmas break to test them out. A collection of people from 9 to 70-something helped me out, and here’s what we thought.

Contents

Herd Mentality review

Snakesss review

Obama Llama review

The Chameleon review

A few words about Big Potato

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Herd Mentality

Herd Mentality is that game you’ve seen on shop shelves with the black and white cow pattern box. It’s a party game for four to ten players, where the aim is to think the way you believe everyone else does. For example, the prompt might say ‘Best pizza topping’. That part of you that’s screaming “It’s boiled eggs! I love boiled eggs on pizza” has to take a back seat. Instead, you’ll probably want to answer with something like mozzarella or pepperoni.

If your answer is the same as the most-popular one when the answers are read out, you get a point! If, however, you’re the only person to give an answer, you’re given a pink rubber cow. While you have the “squishy pink pig-cow of failure” (as it’s known in my house), you can’t win, so you’d better hope someone else has some weird ideas too.

How is it?

Herd Mentality was our group’s favourite game of the bunch. It’s hilarious to see how some peoples’ brains work when they’re under pressure. It’s incredibly simple to learn, and we managed to play around a Christmas dinner table with seven people sat at it, even before clearing the dishes. The only negative is the absence of pens or pencils in the box, so you’ll have to pilfer them from another game, or in my case, my son’s pen box.

My litmus test for how kid-friendly party games are is how often I have to skip a card because my son wouldn’t understand it. Over three games of Herd mentality, I only had to skip three cards, which is fantastic. It’s a brilliant game that will only take about 20 minutes, so even those with the shortest attention span won’t get bored. It’s also the game which my extended non-gamer family members asked for the most. “Can we play that cow one again?” is high praise indeed.

Herd Mentality in Big Potato’s shop.

Snakesss

Snakesss is a game of social deduction and trickery, which are things I love in a game. You don’t often see them used in mass-market games, so I was delighted to see it done in this one. In Snakesss, the players have a couple of minutes to collectively answer a multiple-choice question. Sounds easy enough, but there’s a fly in the ointment. Or more accurately, some snakes. The snakes are players who know who the other snakes are, and they score their points by convincing the rest of the players to choose the wrong answer.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because it’s a twist on many other social deduction games, including my all-time favourite – The Resistance. It only takes one example round to learn, and then you’re up and running. Or slithering, if you’re one of them sneaky snakes. The addition of a third role – The Mongoose of Truth – is great, as it adds a player who you know cannot be a snake.

How is it?

Snakesss was my personal favourite of the games we played. I’m a long time lover of The Resistance, so to see it dressed in a fancy new trivia quiz onesie is great. The difficulty level of the questions seems to be pretty spot-on, although there were a few that the majority of the players already knew. Player count is important too. It says 4-8 players on the box, but as with any game like this, more is better, and I wouldn’t want to play it with fewer than five people. If you’ve ever had your kid subject you to multiple games of four-player Among Us, you’ll know what I mean.

The biggest thing to consider before you take on any social deduction game – Snakesss included – is the group of players you’ll be playing with. Some people absolutely hate bluffing and lying in games, and if you’ve got someone in your group like that, they probably won’t enjoy it. The one thing it has going for it that games like Werewolf and The Resistance don’t, is that there’s less ‘finger in the face’ accusations, and it feels more light-hearted. Great fun, I’ve got a lot of time for Snakesss.

Snakesss in Big Potato’s shop.

Obama Llama (2021 edition)

Obama Llama was first released in 2015, and it’s obviously done very well for itself. There was a follow-up – Obama Llama 2 – three years later, and now we have a 2021 version. It’s a really simple premise for a game. A player on your team gives you a clue, and you have to come up with a rhyming answer. They might have to describe the clue, read the pre-written clues to solve answers, or even act it out, charades-style.

For example, if I read out a card that says ‘The musical genius who loved wearing purple refuses to ingest the meat part of spaghetti bolognese’, I’d hope you’d reply with “Prince won’t eat Mince”. These answers all earn points, which get used to flip cards in the middle of the table, like those card-matching memory games. If you find two cards that rhyme, your team keeps them as a point at the end of the game.

How is it?

There’s a reason this game’s been going for seven years. It’s good fun, and feels like one of those classic party games like Balderdash. One warning I would give, if you’re a 40-something like me, is that a lot of the matches are celebrity-based. I watch very little TV, so some of the people I just had no idea of. That only really becomes a problem on cards where you have to make up the description yourself, but it’s worth remembering if you’re going to play with kids or older people. Did I just refer to myself as older people?

My sister-in-law in particular absolutely loved this game, and wanted to play it again straight after. The only potential problem Obama Llama faces is the same as any game that uses cards as prompts. If you play it loads, you’ll start to know the cards too well, and know the answers as soon as the prompts are given. That said, you’re talking about a game that’s just the wrong side of twenty quid, so it’s not the end of the world, and there are another two versions still out if you need to pick up more. Good fun, and it’s a really good ice-breaker too if people don’t know one another well.

Obama Llama in Big Potato’s shop.

The Chameleon

The Chameleon is a game which Big Potato didn’t send to me, it’s just one I bought for myself. It’s another game of social deduction, and it’s one I really enjoy. In each round one person is the chameleon. An imposter. A fraudster trying to fit-in with the rest of the players. Everybody else has a code card, which, when combined with rolling a couple of dice, points to a word on a card full of answers.

This is where the fun begins. Everyone – chameleon included – has to say one word related to the correct word on the card. The chameleon obviously has no idea which word it is, so needs to takes cues from the other players, and try to blend in. Hence the name of the game. At the same time, the players who know the answer don’t want to be too obvious, lest the chameleon catch-on. At the end of the round, everyone points at who they think the chameleon is, and either win or lose.

How is it?

I’m slightly biased here, because the game of The Chameleon reminds me of another of my favourites, Spyfall. Happily, it brings in touches of another of my favourites – Codenames. The mixture of both is done so nicely that it really feels distinctly different to both of them. Splicing two different party games together can’t be an easy thing, I imagine it’s very easy to create The Homer instead of an Indominus Rex.

It’s another game that theoretically works from three players upwards, but realistically only really shows its true colours (ironic, given the titular reptile) with five or more. It’s truly great fun, and I really look forward to playing The Chameleon. If you’ve played Codenames to death and need something fresh, definitely look at this game. It’s a great intro to social deduction too, in much the same way as Spyfall is. It’s not as accusatory as some, and it feels nice and light.

The Chameleon in Big Potato’s shop.

A few words about Big Potato Games

I don’t always do this, but I really wanted to take a moment to just talk about the publisher of these games, Big Potato Games. I’m a big proponent of British game designers and publishers, and it’s fantastic to see Big Potato succeeding the way they are. What makes it extra-special for me, is in all the ways they go the extra mile.

They’re already one of the leaders in terms of being eco-friendly, with initiatives like planting a tree for each game sold, reducing packaging, and removing plastics from their games, as part of their Green Tatos scheme. I noticed it when I was opening the games. There’s no shrinkwrap, and even the cards are held in decks by paper ties that say ‘I used to be shrink’. It’s going to become a bigger issue across the industry in the next few years, so it’s good to see publishers doing it before they have to.

They’ve done game trade-in schemes with games shops, they offer free print-and-play versions of some games, and even offer free replacement parts for life. The number of times I’ve seen their games added in charity raffles and events is crazy. It’s these little extras which I love, especially when it comes from a company putting out genuinely great games.

For the sake of transparency I should also state that I haven’t been paid for saying any of this, or for covering their games. The links I put below each review aren’t affiliate links, I’ve got no vested interest in you buying their games. I just like their games, and believe in what they’re doing.

Have you played any Big Potato games? Which ones, and what did you think? Let me know in the comments, or come and find me on Twitter.