The Ungame

Last updated
The Ungame
The Ungame box cover and board.jpg
A recent version of The Ungame, featuring the main board, cards, pieces, and one die
Designers Rhea Zakich
PublishersTalicor
Publication1973;49 years ago (1973)
GenresBoard game
Players2-6
Playing time25+ minutes
ChanceHigh
Age range5+

The Ungame is a non-competitive conversation board game created by Rhea Zakich in 1972 and published in 1973. In the game, players move around the board with the aid of a die and answer questions about themselves on cards, while the other players must listen and respond only when prompted. [1]

Contents

Gameplay

The board is laid out as an endless loop of spaces, with no finish line. To begin the game, a deck of question cards is chosen between two options, lighthearted or serious. It is shuffled and placed face-down on the board. Each player in turn rolls a die, moves their marker along the path according to the number rolled, and follows the instructions corresponding to the three types of destination. These spaces correspond to:

Players must remain silent except when taking their turn or answering a question put to them. The game ends at the players' discretion, typically once an agreed-upon time limit has been reached, and has no winner or loser.

History

In 1970, Rhea Zakich, a mother from Garden Grove, California who had grown up during the Great Depression in an emotionally distant family, developed polyps on her vocal cords, forcing her not to speak for three months before her recovery. [1] [2] During her illness, her children and husband stopped talking to her, and she regretted not engaging with them emotionally when she had been able to talk. [1]

As a remedy, she wrote down questions that she wanted her family to ask her on paper cards, later turning the cards into a makeshift game by adding a hand-drawn board and using pieces from a copy of Monopoly . [1] As well as the cards with more personal questions, she added more fun questions such as, "what's your favorite colour?" [1] Initially, she arranged the deck so that she would get the questions she wanted to answer. However, one of her sons shuffled the deck. [1]

Upon their first playthrough, her husband revealed for the first time how frightened her illness made him; her son, a bright student, expressed how he hated the constant pressure to perform well in school; the other son talked about how his peers' teasing made him feel. [1] They let their neighbors borrow the game and she began to make copies before writing to game manufacturers and educational supply companies in an attempt to publish the game. [1] She was declined by all the companies she contacted, who cited its non-competitivity and claimed that people didn't talk about their emotions. [1]

In 1972, a boy from Zakich's neighbourhood found a half-finished copy of the game in the trash, that she had made an error with; his parents approached her, willing to remortgage their house to put the game into production. [1] They founded The Ungame Company, and Zakich, who had recovered her voice, gave talks about the game at schools and then notified local toy shops that people would be searching to buy the game afterwards. [1] The company gained the rights to the game's catchphrase, "tell it like it is". [2]

There were two attempts to adapt the game into a television game show, both of which failed. One succeeded in the creation of a pilot episode, however it included the host pointing out wrong answers, which made Zakich "sick". [2] The other proposed show involved a life-sized game board with giant foam rubber dice. [2]

By 1985, The Ungame had over one million sales. [1] By 1986, many out-dated expressions for the time such as "hang-ups" and "do your own thing" were changed for more up-to-date terms. [3]

Variations

The Ungame has a number of variations and expansions available. Many of these were available in 1987. [4]

Full size board versions

Pocket versions

These include cards only in a smaller travel sized box.

Reception

The Lewiston Journal called The Ungame "Personal Pursuit", comparing it to the trivia board game Trivial Pursuit . [3] In 1987, The Afro-American touted the game as a remedy to "the shredding of the family in Black America", and saw the game as a solution to violent toys and video games, as well as to the depiction of violence against women in media. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Card game</span> Game using playing cards as the primary device

A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific.

<i>Trivial Pursuit</i> Board game

Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which winning is determined by a player's ability to answer general knowledge and popular culture questions. Players move their pieces around a board, the squares they land on determining the subject of a question they are asked from a card. Each correct answer allows the player's turn to continue; a correct answer on one of the six "category headquarters" spaces earns a plastic wedge which is slotted into the answerer's playing piece. The object of the game is to collect all six wedges from each "category headquarters" space, and then return to the center "hub" space to answer a question in a category selected by the other players.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Concentration (card game)</span> A memory based card game

Concentration, also known as Memory, Shinkei-suijaku, Matching Pairs, Match Match, Match Up, Pelmanism, Pexeso or simply Pairs, is a card game in which all of the cards are laid face down on a surface and two cards are flipped face up over each turn. The object of the game is to turn over pairs of matching cards.

<i>Candy Land</i> Board game

Candy Land is a simple racing board game published by Hasbro. The game requires no reading and minimal counting skills, making it suitable for young children. No strategy is involved as players are never required to make choices; only following directions is required. About one million copies per year are sold.

<i>Card Sharks</i> US television game show

Card Sharks is an American television game show. It was created by Chester Feldman for Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions. The game features two contestants who attempt to predict the outcome of survey questions to gain control of a row of oversized playing cards, then determine whether the next card drawn is higher or lower. The title Card Sharks is a play on the term "card sharp", a person skilled at card games.

<i>Sonic Shuffle</i> 2000 video game

Sonic Shuffle is a Sonic the Hedgehog-themed party game developed and published by Sega for the Dreamcast in 2000. The game plays like a board game much in the same vein as Nintendo's Mario Party series, with up to four players moving their characters across a game board filled with a variety of spaces which can trigger different events. Some spaces will launch minigames that pit the players against each other in short competitive events.

Trivial Pursuit is an American game show that ran on The Family Channel from June 7, 1993, to December 30, 1994. Loosely based on the board game of the same name, it was hosted by Wink Martindale with Randy West announcing.

Girl Talk is a board game first sold in 1988. The game was invented by Catherine Rondeau. It was a popular/staple game for teenage girls throughout the 1990s. It was similar to the parlour game Truth or Dare. Girl Talk was one of a rash of "teenage girl-themed games" that appeared on the market in the 1980s and 1990s in which boys, talking on the phone, dancing, having parties and sleepovers, and other "girl-ish" concerns are central themes.

Top Card is a game show that aired on TNN and produced by Reid-Land Productions, replacing TNN's original game show Fandango. The show aired from April 3, 1989 to March 26, 1993 and was based on the card game Blackjack.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fantasy Flight Games</span> American game company

Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) is a game company based in Roseville, Minnesota, United States, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, card, and dice games. As of 2014, it is a subsidiary of Asmodée Éditions.

TriBond is a board game that has sold over 3 million copies in 14 countries since its release in 1990. It requires players to determine a common bond between three subjects. It follows in the tradition of Trivial Pursuit, Outburst and other adult boardgames that require a wide range of knowledge but TriBond requires some problem solving ability as well.

Rat-a-Tat Cat is a memory card game designed by Monty and Ann Stambler and published by Gamewright. It won a Mensa Select award in 1996. The Washington Post described it as "like poker for kids".

Uncle Wiggily Game is a track board game based on a character in a series of children's books by American writer Howard Roger Garis. The game is of the "racing" variety in the style of the European "Goose Game". Players advance along the track from Uncle Wiggily's Bungalow to Dr. Possum's House. There is no optimal strategy involved as play entirely rests upon a random drawing of the cards. The game was first published by Milton Bradley in 1916 and has seen several editions with minor modifications over the years. Uncle Wiggily remains one of the first and favorite games of childhood, and, with Candy Land, is considered a classic juvenile American board game.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spin Master</span> Canadian entertainment company

Spin Master is a Canadian multinational toy and entertainment company that markets consumer products for children. Its brands include Bakugan, Gund, Etch A Sketch, Meccano/ Erector, Air Hogs, PAW Patrol, Aquadoodle, Tech Deck, Hatchimals, Rubik's Cube, and Zoomer. Spin Master employs over 1,600 people globally with offices in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam.

<i>Space Hop</i>

Space Hop is an educational board game about astronomy published by Teaching Concepts in 1973.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Army of Zero</span>

Army of Zero is a puzzle and two-player card game, published by Point Zero Games. Army of Zero is both a card game and an armchair treasure hunt, similar in concept to Masquerade and The Key To The Kingdom. A cash prize was on offer to the person who could provide the best solution to the puzzle. Army of Zero was launched at Toy Fair 2009, held at ExCeL London in January 2009.

Nubian Jak is a multi-award-winning board game, introduced in 1994, that combines questions on historical facts with pop trivia, to highlight some of the achievements by people of colour globally.

Family Game Night was an American television game show based on Hasbro's family of board games and EA's video game franchise of the same name. The show was hosted by Todd Newton. Burton Richardson announced for the first two seasons, until he was replaced by Stacey J. Aswad for the third season, and then Andrew Kishino beginning in the fourth season. The 60-minute program debuted on October 10, 2010, on The Hub, formerly Discovery Kids. The network would become Discovery Family on October 13, 2014; it was previewed on October 9, 2010, on its sister channel, TLC. Seasons 1 and 2 each contained 26(1) and 30(2) episodes. Seasons 3, 4 and 5 each contained 15 episodes. Season two premiered on Friday, September 2, 2011, and additional games were added. The games added to the second season included Cranium Brain Breaks, Green Scream, Ratuki Go-Round, Simon Flash, Operation Sam Dunk, Trouble Pop Quiz, and Spelling Bee. However, games from the previous season were still kept.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shadow Hunters</span>

Shadow Hunters is a social deduction board game designed by Yasutaka Ikeda that was first published in 2005 by Game Republic in Japan. The game was published in the United States by Z-Man Games in 2008. The art style of the game closely resembles the style found in Japanese anime and manga.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura M. Robinson</span> Canadian actress, author, game designer, singer, and television producer

Laura McKinlay Robinson is a Canadian actress, author, game designer, singer, speaker, and television producer. She co-invented multiple board games, beginning with Balderdash (1984), which has sold millions of copies internationally, and was the basis for a television game show (2004–2005).

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Donovan, Tristan (2017). It's All a Game: A Short History of Board Games. United Kingdom: Atlantic Books. pp. 208–14. ISBN   9781786494559.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Davidson, Jim (11 June 1981). "The Ungame". The Pittsburgh Press . p. 8. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
  3. 1 2 Grossman, Cathy Lynn (22 October 1986). "Ungame is kind of like personal pursuit". The Lewiston Journal . pp. 1C–2C. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
  4. 1 2 ""The Ungame" portrait of the black American family". The Afro American . 14 March 1987. p. 12. Retrieved 7 October 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.