I’m always on the lookout for new games to play during our monthly Games Nights or even with my immediate family. I love games. I love the game Charades but only if I play with people I know very well because I get shy acting in front of a large group of people or people I don’t know well. That is exactly why Reverse Charades is so awesome.

What Do You Mean Reverse Charades?

I was confused at first too but it’s very simple actually. In the original game of charades, one person acts out a word and the others try to guess it. In Reverse Charades, a group of people act out a word while one person tries to guess it.

In the original rules, it has you splitting your group into two teams. One team acts out the word, one person on the other team is the guesser and the rest of the team holds the word cards for the acting team. You act out and guess as many words as you can in one minute (timer included.) There are 720 words in the game so it will be a while before you see the same word again.

When a Group Acts Out a Word…

…hilarity ensues! Seriously every time we play this game we are CRACKING UP. I’ve played the Junior edition (which isn’t much different from the regular edition) with a group of adults, a group of children and a group of mixed adults and children and each time it had us dying of laughter.  Each person interprets the word slightly differently so the guesser has more than one type of action to guess with. Although the actors can’t discuss and plan anything, they can work together to act out the word.

Can You Give Me an Example?

For example we had the word rollercoaster once. My daughter was moving her arm up and down sort of like a rollercoaster and my other daughter still didn’t get it. So my brother got down on his hands and knees to pretend to be the rollercoaster car and my daughter automatically thought to get on his back and pretend to ride it. My guessing daughter still didn’t know what it was so while they were doing that, I did the movement of the rollercoaster with my hand, but slower and more pronounced and she guessed it!

Another example, we were acting out wheelchair. My friend was already sitting in a chair so she pretended to move as if it was a wheelchair (by rolling the wheels.) That didn’t get a correct guess so I crouched down beside her chair and made a big round gesture with my hand to show it was big round wheel and used my fingers to indicate it was moving. It worked!

Easily Adaptable

The rules are very simple and you can see the whole set to the right. No pages upon page of rules and scoring.

The game is designed for six players or more and the Junior edition is designed for ages six and up however we easily were able to adjust the rules for our situation. In the first example above when I played with my brother and daughters, that is only four people and my daughters were only five and six.  So three of us acted out and the one guessing held the box of cards facing the actors and pulled up each card and held it while we acted. When it was guessed, it was put down on the table and she pulled up another one.

Since my daughters are beginning readers, we ditched the timer and took the time to let them read the card and if they couldn’t read it or didn’t know what it was, we whispered it to them. Since we had no timer, each group got to act out three words before we switched out the guesser.

We took the game to our Spark/Brownie/Guide camp in January and played with the Brownies and then later the Guides when the Sparks were in bed. Again we ditched the timer and just did three each so we could help those who could not read or understand the words.

Need a Visual?

Expansion Packs

There are currently three expansion packs available for the games: Girls’ Night In Edition, Sports Edition and Holiday Edition. I have the holiday edition and it includes words like MISTLETOE, SNOWBALL FIGHT and THREE WISE MEN.

Each expansion pack contains 200 more words and retails for about $9.99 each. There is room to store some expansion packs in the box of the Original or Junior Edition.

Where to Buy

Reverse Charades including the Junior edition and expansion packs can be found in 1800+ retailers in the US, Canada & abroad and can be purchased online.

*Disclosure: I or a member of my review team received the product mentioned above free of charge by the company or PR representative in exchange for this post. No other compensation was provided. See my Disclosure Policy for more information.