Fun Facts

• Designer: Kasper Lapp
• Publisher: Repos Production
• Players: 4-8
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Repos at SPIEL 2022

Fun Facts is the newest party game offering from Repos Production; they has had a a lot of success in this genre in the past.  This particular game happens to be cooperative; you and your fellow players must work together to answer questions and try to achieve the best score at the end of the 8 rounds.

Each player gets a plastic arrow shaped board and a dry-erase marker.  The pen is of matching color to the arrow so that everyone can easily see which arrow belongs to which player (also, you will write your name on one side of the arrow board).  The deck of cards is shuffled in setup and an 8 card deck is dealt out to be used in this game. One player is designated to be the initial starting player, and they are given the white star piece – this will also be used as the place to keep track of the group’s score.  

In each round, the starting player takes the top card from the deck and reads the question aloud. The answer to each question will always be a number, and sometimes the possible answer values will be limited (for instance, on a scale from 0 to 100….) – but this will be clearly stated on the answer card.

All players now silently answer the question and write their answer on their arrow board.  When all players are finished, the starting player now places their arrow face down in the center of the table.  Going clockwise, each successive player places their arrow either above, below or between previously placed pieces – the goal here is to get the answer values on the arrows to go up in order (lowest value at the bottom, highest at the top).  Of course, you can’t see anyone’s answers when you do this – so you have to correctly predict what your teammates are answering!   During this phase, the players should not communicate any information to other players.  Once every player has played their arrow, the starting player does get the option to move their arrow anywhere in the stack (or can just leave it in the same place).

Now, the answers are revealed one at a time, starting from the bottom.  Once they are all revealed, you now must remove any arrows that prevent the remainder from being in correct order – that is the next number must always be the same or more than the previous answer.  The group is able to decide which arrows are to be removed.  The group scores one point per arrow in the final line (thus the max score for a round is equal to the number of players).  The sum can be kept on the starting player star – it is also a dry erase board.  The starting player star is passed to another player, and a total of 8 rounds are played this way.  

At the end of the game, you can compare your score to a chart in the rules to see how well you did. 

My thoughts on the game

Repos has made some of my favorite party games, and they have run the gamut as far as styles.  Here, you are challenged to work with your knowledge of your teammates, as your ability to predict the answers of your teammates will definitely help you score better.  And, this part of the game is both what I love and hate about it.

When played with a group of close friends, this game was a blast. Our group had a great time as we were able to make some decent and intelligent guesses about how certain players would answer the questions.  We also had a lot of laughs when someone gave a score on a self rating question (i.e. how attractive do you think you are?) which was clearly out of line with what the rest of us thought.

However, I have also tried this at a convention with acquaintances, and this game proves to be a lot harder (well, at least for me).  Without knowing a lot about the other players, it can be quite hard to try to determine how they would answer certain opinion questions, and nearly impossible to figure out factual questions (“how many games are in your board game collection?”)   It’s not like it ruins the game, but it certainly provides a different sort of game than with players you know well.

Now, one place where this might really shine though is as an ice-breaker game/activity with new people.  For instance, playing this on the first day of a game convention might be a nice way to get introduced to a bunch of people, and who knows – based on the answers you see, maybe you’ll find that you have some commonalities with your fellow players that maybe you didn’t know before!

There are nearly 200 cards in the box, and as the game surely can’t predict who is playing, the game allows cards to be thrown out if they are deemed not good for the group.  We tend to just let any player veto a question at any point – no questions asked, no reasons need to be given.  Just yell out “new card” and we’ll draw a different one.  I have found the more factual cards to be more interesting – “what is the size of your game collection?”  “how many times have you watched the movie Titanic?” than the rate yourself on a 1-100 scale questions.

The 0-100 questions also seem to be too easily gamified – where the last player in turn order can always just answer zero and put their arrow at the bottom of the stack; regardless of what their actual answer might be.  Sure, that’s maybe not in the spirit of the game.  But it does help you guarantee two points in  that round…. 

On the whole, I have found Fun Facts to be an enjoyable time, but moreso with close friends as opposed to strangers.  I’d personally prefer Just One to this, but everyone is different, and as with all Repos party games, there is certainly one option for just about every gamer.  This one just wouldn’t be my choice of the Repos selection.

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor