Frantic Antics
- Board's Eye View
- 29 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Helvetiq's Frantic Antics is a chaotic charades games designed for at least four players but which takes up to ten. The USP is that players are almost all simultaneously acting out the words or expressions on their card while trying to guess the words and phrases that all the other players are acting.
Designed by Aaron Smith and Ryan Hennings, Frantic Antics is formulated as a race game, in that you set it up as a circuit of 30 'home' and 'frantic' cards. Players each have a meeple that starts off on their own home card. The frantic cards each carry their own specific instructions that you must follow when your meeple is on that card. In addition, some limit you to Act (ie: you can't guess other players' words) or to Guess (you can't act out your own words) while your meeple is on the card. The words and phrases players have to act out are on their 'antic' cards. These list the words 1-4, notionally ranked for difficulty. When another player successfully guesses the word you are acting, you both advance your meeples by the number of places that corresponds to the 1-4 value of the word.
That's the game in a nutshell. It's fast & furious and swift & silly in equal measure. And it's not a game where any of the players can remain in a sedentary position: you all need to be standing round the table so you can move round as your meeple advances round the circuit. If you can make the space for it, this then is one to play after Christmas dinner to help the family burn off some of the extra calories they've consumed. Each play is only likely to last around 15 minutes. Younger family members will want to carry on for a second round but older players may prefer to move on to a less strenuous charades variant.
