Overview & How to Play

Taboo is clue-giving with a clean twist.

On your turn, you have one minute to draw cards from the deck, one at a time, and give clues to your teammates. But, you CANNOT say one of the taboo words. If you get caught for saying a taboo, you lose a point. If your team successfully guesses your card, your team gains a point, and you draw the next card.

That’s pretty much it, you play until each player has given out clues once. Whichever team has the most points wins!

Pros

This game is really everything you would ever need. It is really no nonsense, with the very functional card holder and buzzer, with streamlined rules and notepads for bookkeeping.

In fact, Taboo is so streamlined, you could take under 30 seconds to set up and play, and you can play it practically anywhere due to it being pretty much cards inside a card holder.

The capacity to ‘buzz’ someone in the game is also much appreciated, where when one is giving out clues, someone else must survey them to make sure they don’t say a taboo word. This is super important, since that 1 point penalty is quite drastic. There’s this really fun dynamic of one player hounding the current player, looking over his or her shoulder to ensure that cheating doesn’t happen. This, combined with the near infinite ways to give clues despite 5 restrictions on each card, really pushes Taboo from just a simple party game to re-playable competitiveness. Remember, cards are double-sided.

The game allows you to be super big brain with inside jokes, using stuff from previous memories with friends, or popular IP’s like TV shows or movies to get your point across. One very notable usage from us was Minecraft to give out clues on a tool like a Shovel, getting to bypass the game’s taboo restrictions by using video game context.

Cons & Nitpicks

There’s only two real concerns. First, there is an abundance of pop culture references, which can be irritating. This could have been easily separated initially to avoid confusion and alienation on many turns. After all, you cannot skip cards if you’re stuck, so these can just automatically brick someone’s turn when drawn.

Then, Taboo demands a FRANTIC pace, where the sandtimer quickly counts down while players quickly read and react to cards on the spot. This is definitely not for everyone, especially if they’re not a native English speaker.

That’s really it though! We have had so much success with this game, and has continued to scratch our competitive-team itch, all in a matter of minutes. For more competitive fun, we recommend stretching out the game to have each person give clues twice.