Chairman of the Board: No right answer

‘Loaded Questions’ game review

By Ed Appleby, Illustrator

Board games are a great way to get to know people. Strangers can become friends and friends can become bitter rivals. Party games are designed specifically for this purpose, and can be either silly or deep. This game is a little of both.

Loaded Questions is a party game for three to six players designed by Eric Poses and published by All Things Equal, Inc. in 1997. In the game, players move around the board and draw cards that feature broad opinion questions, such as “Describe your life in two words” or “If you could turn invisible, where would you go?” The other players write down their answers and then one of those players reads them to the active player, who tries to guess which answer belongs to which player, moving one space for each correct answer.

The game is a great ice-breaker and the question-answering mechanic is pretty strong. There are a couple of instances in the game where players may have the same answer, or very similar answers, but generally speaking the answers are usually unique and identifiable.

Where the game breaks down is in its board movement mechanics. Players roll a six-sided die and move that many spaces, then players can move up to another five spaces depending on how many questions they guess right. As the board has a relatively short path, this weights the die roll too much. No matter how well you do in the questions, you will still be behind unless you get high rolls. The game would run better if you only rolled the die on the first turn and then only progressed based on questions.

Loaded Questions is a fun game for the end of the night or as an ice-breaker at parties, but don’t be afraid to modify the mechanics to your gaming style. You may just want to ditch the board and go to a points system.