(Warning: this blog and the pictures do contain naughty words. I kept the naughty words to a minimum but on the pictures there’s nothing I can do)
The missus and I had a few mates over last night for a gaming session, and we finally cracked open a brand new acquisition I thought I’d write up for you all: Sweary Bingo. Now, I’ll be straight with you: after a quick flick through the instructions, we realised we didn’t think it was quite our cup of tea. So, naturally, we promptly changed the rules entirely.
The official goal of Sweary Bingo is exactly what you’d expect: a designated ‘caller’ pulls a swear word tile from the included box, reads it aloud, and players mark it off their cards. A simple, if slightly vulgar, game of luck.
However, we decided to elevate the evening. We kept the Bingo cards secret, stashing them by our side while we played other, more thinky games. Every time someone in the room let slip a word that was on their card, we could mark it off. We kept our cards hidden from each other to prevent cheating, and you definitely weren’t allowed to mark off a word based on your own contributions to the night’s profanity.
After a few beverages, the evening morphed from a casual gaming session into a deeply competitive game of psychological warfare. The real fun was trying to manipulate our friends into saying specific words without being blindingly obvious about it. The subtle art of conversational sabotage was truly magnificent to behold.
Nitty Gritty Stuff
Truthfully, there isn’t really a “nitty gritty” for this game, as it is, fundamentally, just bingo cards covered in profanity. To play the game properly, you first have to turn the included cardboard sheet into a ‘caller’ box—a task fit for an origami wizard, if you ask me.
But that’s the beauty of it: we made it into an adult drinking game. Cross off a word? Take a drink. Get a line or a full house? Then you get to watch smugly as everyone else downs their
drinks. It shows that the game doesn’t have to be straight-up bingo; its components are versatile enough for some creative house-ruling.
Tips and Tricks
As for tips and tricks, officially, there are none—it’s Bingo, it’s all about luck. To play the standard game properly, you simply sit and hope your specific words come out of the box before your opponent’s do.
But in our modded version, it became a strategic battle. For instance, my wife spent half the evening trying to bait me (or anyone else) into calling her a ‘w***er’ without me catching on to her utterly devilish scheme. That kind of meta-game is where the real mileage is.
Overall Review
Overall, this was a fantastic side game for the evening. I don’t think this would ever be a game I’d sit down to play as the main event for a whole night. It’s also certainly not one I’ll be cracking out with the nieces and nephews on Christmas Day!
But for a bit of cheeky background competitive banter alongside our bigger games, we thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s simple, the components are high-quality, and the sheer audacity of the premise makes it a great addition to the collection for when the mood is right.
Right, a quick word on the scoring before the final verdict. When we write a blog for the good folks at Zatu, we’re usually asked to rate the games across a few standard measures: Artwork, Complexity, Re-playability, Player Interaction, and Component Quality.
But dear reader, Sweary Bingo doesn’t exactly slot neatly into any of those categories—especially given the homebrew rule set we used. The game is essentially word bingo, meaning the Artwork score is essentially non-existent (unless I start judging the font choices or the cardboard packaging). Complexity is non-existent in traditional Bingo, though our version spiced things up nicely. Re-playability? Your nan might disagree, but Bingo fundamentally doesn’t change game-to-game. And Player Interaction is generally frowned upon in most Bingo halls, where you might get chucked out for sneezing too loudly. The only truly measurable rating here is Component Quality—and outside of the ‘origami wizard box,’ it’s just cards and tiles. So, if the numerical scores below look low, it’s only because the game doesn’t actually fit the criteria. Even the final Overall Score is based purely on the fact that we decided not to play the game properly, but used it as a brilliant piece of competitive background chaos instead.
