For those keeping track at home, that’s not one but two exclamation marks in Zobmondo!!’s title, the surest sign of an overzealous game inventor and the first red flag to an alert consumer. Jeopardy! not withstanding, truly superb games rarely need to trumpet themselves with gratuitous punctuation. Zobmondo!! is not truly superb. Neither is it truly terrible. It is, however, another party game that sabotages an entertaining premise with lousy play mechanics resulting in a product that’s a better activity than it is a game.
Zobmondo!! is subtitled “That Crazy ‘Would You Rather’ Game” which nicely sums up the game’s premise: deciding between two extremely undesirable choices. On her turn a player draws from the ever-familiar box o’ cards and, depending on the color of the space on the ever-familiar track her pawn is on, reads a question silently. Then she secretly writes a prediction for how the rest of the players will answer the question. Which is to say, she predicts the consensus the players will come to. Then she reads the question aloud and the discussion begins.
The questions come in five flavors: pain/fear/discomfort (“Would you rather stick your hand in a waffle iron OR have someone step on your bare foot with a golf shoe?), appearance/embarrassment (“Would you rather have no nipples OR four?”), food/ingestion (“Would you rather lick butter off Pavarotti‘s entire body OR suck grease out of Andrew Dice Clay‘s hair?”), ethics/intellect (“Would you rather be the reason for an accident that leaves a stranger dead OR a friend crippled?”), and random (“Would you rather experience the Titanic OR the Hindenberg?”). And the vast majority of them are disturbing, repulsive, disgusting, or otherwise unpleasant. Which is, of course, what makes them fun.
If the reader guessed correctly, she rolls the die and advances her pawn along the path toward the “quagmire” in the center of the board. Once reaching the center, a player must invent her own “Would you rather” question and elicit a non-unanimous response in a secret ballot to win the game.
The questions in Zobmondo!! are guaranteed to generate spirited discussion, which is where the fun lies. Like other getting-to-know-you games (True Colors, Scruples, Bet-A-Fact, etc), the game lets players gain insights into their friends’ personalities in a light-hearted environment. As an activity, it’s a hoot. But as a game, it has a number of problems.
The game board’s design is confusing, with many spiral paths leading to the center of the board instead of a single path all players use. Each path ends in a swath of spaces of a single color. The intent was to let players choose according to their preference, but in practice it makes little difference and obscures more than it helps. All paths are only ten spaces long, which means you can get to the center in just two turns! A single, longer path would improve and clarify play. Predicting the group’s consensus isn’t a very compelling exercise, and succeeding offers little sense of personal accomplishment. Additionally, some people fear being put on the spot creatively and may dislike the quagmire rules.
The Zombondo!! questions could form the core of a reasonable game, but this really isn’t it. Like many of the other getting-to-know-you games mentioned above, it works better as an activity than as a competition. Frankly, you’re better off just reading and discussing the questions, ignoring the game rules. In which case, you may wish to pick up Would You Rather…? by Justin Heimberg & David Gomberg (neither of whom appear to be connected with Zobmondo!! in any way despite the similarity in concept and name). The book consists of about 200 of these types of questions and is more portable than a large game box.
Lest you think I’m trashing Zobmondo!!, I’m not. Most of the questions are super and fun to discuss. I just wish everything else in the box supported them with a solid and entertaining game instead of the existing lackluster framework. But if the activity sounds fun to you, the set of questions in Zobmondo!! will provide many hours of hilarity.