Although they produce precious few games not targeted at the kiddies these days, you can always count on industry giants Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers (both of which are owned by Hasbro) to pump out a new party game or two for the holiday season. Parker's entry this year is Catch Phrase which, although it doesn't break new ground, nevertheless provides a fun spin on familiar elements.
Did you ever play Wonder Ball, Hot Potato or Time Bomb when you were younger? Catch Phrase is essentially Hot Potato with words. A gizmo shows you a word (or a short phrase). You try to get your teammates to shout out that word as quickly as possible. You can do or say anything to accomplish that goal, subject to the typical word-game weenie rules on cluegiving (first letter, rhymes with, etc). When your team guesses the word, you pass the gizmo to someone from the other team, who repeats the process for their team with a new word. This continues, with the gizmo going back and forth between teams, until the timer buzzes. Whichever team is not holding the gizmo at the end gains a point.
What makes the game particularly amusing is something we've dubbed The World's Most Annoying Timer. This timer is a simple device you push once to start or reset. Once started, the thing starts beeping. Slowly at first, then as time elapses it beeps faster, and still faster. And with every acceleration of the timer, the tension mounts. Because nobody is really sure how much time they've got left to get rid of the gizmo.
You see, the timer is random.
The timer beeps in four phases, each phase with a faster beep rate than the last. The length of time spent in each phase is random. So the beep rate gives everyone a rough idea of how much time they have left, but you never know if that final phase is going to last for fifteen seconds or only three.
The timer has a dramatic effect on gameplay, flustering normally calm people and building the drama to a satisfying crescendo. Players toss the gizmo away as if it were a viper, desperate to get it into the opposing team's possession.
The words themselves are simple, often trivial— the game is not intended to be a mental challenge. They come on sixteen double-sided disks, 72 words per side. The gizmo is designed so that only one word at a time shows through its window. A click of a button advances the disk to the next word. In theory. In practice, the gizmo is extremely sensitive and advances by four or five words at a time unless the button is pressed very gingerly. Since the who essence of the game involves a sense of escalating frenzy, the button usually gets slammed hard. This is actually more than a minor annoyance. 72 words should be enough for a full game, but instead the gizmo skips over words and you wind up looping far too early, grinding the round to a halt. Like Inklings, flaws in the equipment reduce the fun.
Of course, the winning team is fairly arbitrary. Scoring is based much more on luck than on the skill of the players. One team could hold onto the gizmo for the first fifty seconds, stuck on one word, and then pass it on to the next team a scant second before time expires. Not very fair— but if you're looking for a game which rewards good play, this certainly isn't it. On the other hand, it's a fun family or party game which non-gamers will likely enjoy.