"The Game of Hilarious Comparisons!" | |
---|---|
Designers | Mark Alan Osterhaus, Matthew Kirby |
Publishers | Pegasus Spiele, Out of the Box, Mattel |
Publication | 1999 |
Years active | 1999–present |
Players | 4–10 |
Setup time | 1 minute |
Playing time | 30–75 minutes |
Chance | Medium |
Age range | 12 and up |
Skills | Social skills |
Related games | |
Dixit, Say Anything, Cranium | |
[1] |
Apples to Apples is a party game originally published by Out of the Box Publishing Inc., and now by Mattel. Players start with a hand of seven "red apple" cards, which feature nouns. A player is selected to be the first judge, and that judge plays a "green apple" card, which features an adjective. The round is won by playing the "red apple" card that the judge determines to be the best match for the "green apple" card. The role of the judge rotates, and the number of rounds is determined by the number of players. The game is designed for four to ten players and played for 30–75 minutes.
Apples to Apples was chosen by Mensa International in 1999 as a "Mensa Select" prizewinner, an award given to five games each year. [2] It was also named "Party Game of the Year" in the December 1999 issue of Games magazine [3] and received the National Parenting Center's seal of approval in May 1999. [4] The popularity of the game led to an increased interest in similar card-matching/answer-judging party games. On September 8, 2007, Out of the Box Publishing sold the rights for Apples to Apples to Mattel. [5]
The original boxed set contained:
Four expansion sets were available, adding 72 extra green apple cards and 216 additional red apple cards each. In 2002, Expansion Set 3 won the Origins Award for Best Card Game Expansion or Supplement of 2001. [6] As of 2005[update], the original set and its expansions have been retired and replaced by a Party Box with the combined contents of the basic set and its first two expansions, and Party Box Expansion 1 set with the combined contents of the third and fourth expansions, and a Party Box Expansion 2, which contains new cards. Apples to Apples Junior, for ages nine and up, Apples to Apples Kids, for ages seven and up, and a variety of themed editions were also developed. Mattel has continued to update card sets and packaging and add themed editions.
In 2019, Apples to Apples was inducted into the Origins Award Hall of Fame. [7]
Illuminati: New World Order (INWO) is an out-of-print collectible card game (CCG) that was released in 1994 by Steve Jackson Games, based on their original boxed game Illuminati, which in turn was inspired by the 1975 book The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. An OMNI sealed-deck league patterned after the Atlas Games model was also developed.
Magic: The Gathering is a tabletop and digital collectible card game created by Richard Garfield. Released in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast, Magic was the first trading card game and had approximately fifty million players as of February 2023. Over twenty billion Magic cards were produced in the period from 2008 to 2016, during which time it grew in popularity. As of the 2022 fiscal year, Magic generates over $1 billion in revenue annually.
Uno, stylized as UNO, is a proprietary American shedding-type card game originally developed in 1971 by Merle Robbins in Reading, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, that housed International Games Inc., a gaming company acquired by Mattel on January 23, 1992.
Zendo is a game of inductive logic designed by Kory Heath in which one player creates a rule for structures ("koans") to follow, and the other players try to discover it by building and studying various koans which follow or break the rule. The first student to correctly state the rule wins.
Illuminati is a card game made by Steve Jackson Games (SJG), inspired by the 1975 book The Illuminatus! Trilogy, by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea. The game has ominous secret societies competing with each other to control the world through various means, including legal, illegal, and even mystical. It was designed as a "tongue-in-cheek rather than serious" take on conspiracy theories. It contains groups named similarly to real-world organizations, such as the Society for Creative Anachronism and the Symbionese Liberation Army. It can be played by two to eight players. Depending on the number of players, a game can take between one and six hours.
Fluxx is a card game, played with a specially designed deck published by Looney Labs. It is different from most other card games, in that the rules and the conditions for winning are altered throughout the game, via cards played by the players.
Looney Labs, Inc. is a small game company based in College Park, Maryland, United States. It is named after its founders, Andrew Looney and Kristin Looney, and is best known for creating the Fluxx line of card games. The company has three U.S. patents and eight Origins Awards.
Quiddler is a card game and word game created by Set Enterprises. Players compete by spelling English words from cards in hands of increasing size, each card worth various points. The game combines aspects of Scrabble and gin rummy. The word "Quiddler" is a trademark.
Chez Geek is a card game that parodies geek culture and cohabitation. It was created by Jon Darbro and developed by Alain H. Dawson, with additional development by Steve Jackson and Russell Godwin. The cards and rules were illustrated by John Kovalic. Upon its release, the game won the Origins Award.
Kremlin is a board game satire of power struggles within the pre-glasnost Soviet Union government of the 1980s. The game takes its name from the Kremlin in Moscow, the location associated with the central Soviet government offices. The original German-language edition was designed by Urs Hostettler and released in 1986 by the Swiss board game company Fata Morgana Spiele under the name Kreml. An English translation of the game with slightly modified rules was published by Avalon Hill in 1988. Kremlin won a 1988 Origins Award for Best Boardgame Covering the Period 1900-1946.
Skip-Bo is a commercial version of the card game Spite and Malice, a derivative of Russian Bank, which in turn originates from Double Klondike. In 1967, Minnie Hazel "Skip" Bowman (1915–2001) of Brownfield, Texas, began producing a boxed edition of the game under the name SKIP-BO. In 1980 the game was purchased by International Games, which was subsequently bought by Mattel in 1992. A mobile version of the game for iOS was released by Magmic in September, 2013. There is a new version called "SKIP-BO Mod" that comes in a white and blue case.
Out of the Box Publishing was a Wisconsin-based publishing company specializing in family, card, and party games. As of October 2013, they had published over 45 titles.
Mythos is an out-of-print collectible card game published by Chaosium. It is based on the Cthulhu Mythos stories of the horror author H. P. Lovecraft, as well as on Chaosium's own Call of Cthulhu role-playing game.
Dominion is a card game created by Donald X. Vaccarino and published by Rio Grande Games. Originally published in 2008, it was the first deck-building game, and inspired a genre of games building on its central mechanic. Each player begins with a small deck of cards, which they improve by purchasing cards from a common supply that varies from game to game. Each turn, players draw from their deck and use the cards drawn to purchase new cards or perform other actions. Once a player's draw pile is depleted, they reshuffle their discard pile back into their draw pile, thus allowing cards purchased on prior turns to be drawn and played on future turns. The player who has the most victory points by the end of the game wins.
Qwirkle is a tile-based game for two to four players, designed by Susan McKinley Ross and published by MindWare. Qwirkle shares some characteristics with the games Rummikub and Scrabble. It is distributed in Canada by game and puzzle company Outset Media. Qwirkle is considered by MindWare to be its most awarded game of all time. In 2011, Qwirkle won the Spiel des Jahres. A sequel, Qwirkle Cubes, was released by Mindware in 2009.
RoboRally, also stylized as Robo Rally, is a board game for 2–8 players designed by Richard Garfield and published by Wizards of the Coast (WotC) in 1994. Various expansions and revisions have been published by both WotC and by Avalon Hill.
Dixit, is a French board game created by Jean-Louis Roubira, illustrated by Marie Cardouat, and published by Libellud. Using a set of cards illustrated with dreamlike images, players select cards that match a title suggested by the designated storyteller player, and attempt to guess which card the storyteller selected. The game was introduced in 2008. Dixit won the 2010 Spiel des Jahres award.
Cards Against Humanity is an adult party game in which players complete fill-in-the-blank statements, using words or phrases typically deemed offensive, risqué, or politically incorrect, printed on playing cards. It has been compared to the card game Apples to Apples (1999).
Time's Up is a charades-based party game designed by Peter Sarrett, and published by R&R Games, Inc., a Tampa, Florida–based manufacturer of tabletop games and party games. The first edition of the game was published in 1999, with the most recent edition, Time's Up! Deluxe, published in 2008. It is a game for teams of two or more players, and is played in three rounds. Time's Up! is based on the classic parlour game known as Celebrity.
Anomia is a card-based party game designed by Andrew Innes and first published by Anomia Press in 2009. It is a fast-paced game where players flip cards until the symbols on two players’ cards match. Matching players then race to give an example of the category on their opponent’s card. Following its release, multiple editions have been published, including Anomia Party Edition, Anomia X, Anomia Kids, Anomia 2.0 (UK), and Anomia Pop Culture. It has been published in 15 languages and is available in more than 20 countries.