Note: There are three different games, all of which have the same rules and concepts using different themes (Marriage Material, Management Material and Management Material: Information Technology), I am only going to review the Information Technology version since all three would have nearly identical reviews.
We took out a copy of this game the other night for our weekly family game night and decided to give it a shot. I've had the game now for several years, given to me by a local gaming store owner as a prize for something, and it has sat, alone, in my game closet the whole time.
First, I'll start off by saying this game is either going to be something you will like, or hate, and that is going to be based on how you play it and how serious or how fun you decide to take it.
On this particular gaming night, the players were myself, my wife and my Mom and Dad, who both recently started to get into gaming.
First I'll give you my thoughts on the game itself, which appears to be from a small company or self-publisher, but the quality itself is actually quite good - in fact, when held up in comparison to more main stream games from larger companies (such as Phase 10 or Uno for example), the quality of the cards is almost at the same level, quite surprising and nice to see that the publisher didn't cut corners and take a cheap way out like so many other games I won't mention here.
Basic game play is pretty easy, and I will give a basic rundown of how to play without copying the entire set of rules over. Each player is an employee in a company, and as the game plays, jobs will be drawn from a deck on the table, each player (who is an 'employee') tries his hardest to get out of a job by coming up with a good excuse. The job (project) will have a number, such as Project "5", and in order to get out of the project you would need an excuse that is equal to or greater than that number.
You can use many small excuses, or one larger one, but you may not want to give up a good (high point value) excuse too quickly, there are some high point projects that you might get stuck with. The first person to reach 30 points of projects is out of the game, and the game contines until there is only one employee who has managed to talk his way out of almost every project given.
The excuses come in the form of the player's hand, which you add to by drawing 2 cards from the excuses deck each turn. In addition, the player has a chance of drawing a 'recognition' card, which can be used to screw other players who have excused their way out of a project.
Here is a quick rundown of a turn and how it might go...
On my turn, I drew a project called "Locate a Good JAVA Programmer", it is a 3 point value project, which means I need to either come up with 3 points of excuses to get out of it, or the project is mine, and the card value is added to my score (remember, when you reach 30 project points you are out of the game - apparently getting a promotion out of the office and away from your friends who continue to come up with reasons to get out of other projects).
In my hand I have a few excuses, The first excuse is a 2 point excuse "Virus ate all network files", the next excuse is also a 2 point excuse "Error 404 - File Not Found", followed by a 9 pointer "I have a date tonight" and an 11 pointer "Blue Screen of Death".
Since I want to hold onto the 9 and 11 point ones later for a larger project, or as a card to save me from going out of the game, I put down my two smaller excuses, which total 4 points. Since my assigned project was only a 3 point project, I have gotten out of it and it is passed onto the next player, this process then repeats itself.
The "Recognition" cards could have been used once I displayed my 4 points of excuses, another player could have basically commended me once I gave my excuses, this would in turn raise the project point value up, and if the other player could have raised it up over my 4 points of excuses, then I'd have been stuck with the project.
For example, In the above scenario, when I put down my two 2-point excuses and 'gotten out' of the project, my wife could have given me a recognition. An example would be a 2 point recognition called "I'll order in a sandwich for ya!" which essentially is an incentive for me to take the project. Since the point value of the project was 3, and my wife added a 2 point recognition, the total point value became 5. Since I had played only a total of 4 points of excuses, I would have been stuck with the project (I could have put down one of my higher point value excuses here, but as I had said, I wanted to hold onto them until later when I really needed them or for a game winning move).
The cards are beautifully illustrated by Cartoonist Roy Schneider (no, not the old dude form Jaws), he did an amazing job at some awesome cartoons which really add to the feel and fun of this game and bring it to life. As with the card quality, if the publisher had opted for an illustrator who was not as skilled, or went with 'clip-art' or generic text, the game probably wouldn't have been considered.
So hats off to them for not holding back on their efforts to create this game with top notch graphics and quality.
With that all being said, I have to now go back to one of my original points. You are either going to love this game, or hate this game, and to be honest, the first 5 minutes or so of game play we all really hated this game, but once we got into the feel and fun of it, and started to really act out excuses and play things up a bit with some minor role playing, the game actually started to grow on us and became a lot of fun.
Actually, my Wife, my Dad and myself all loved it, my Mom just wasn't catching on and has gone so far as to say she'll never play it again. She is more of a Scrabble/Trivial Pursuit type of person anyways.
Quality: 4/5 (Way to go for not skimping out on quality here)
Game Play: 3/5 (Not bad, not the best, but fun in the right mood)
Artwork: 5/5 (excellent cartoons)
Fun Factor: 3/5 (some will love it, some wont)
Overall Rating: 3.5/5
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