Intro
We’ve all been there, you’re on a date and things seem to be going well, when suddenly your date does something that makes you cringe and die a little on the inside. They have given you “the ick”. Perhaps it wouldn’t bother anyone else like it bothers you, but everyone’s different and what causes a feeling of wanting the ground to swallow one person up, another person may even find adorable.
Welcome to Get The Ick, where groups of friends can have humorous conversations about these differences of opinion and you can score points based on how accurately you can predict what seemingly innocuous things horrify your opponents (and in some cases, which things they actually find a little endearing).
Intro
We’ve all been there, you’re on a date and things seem to be going well, when suddenly your date does something that makes you cringe and die a little on the inside. They have given you “the ick”. Perhaps it wouldn’t bother anyone else like it bothers you, but everyone’s different and what causes a feeling of wanting the ground to swallow one person up, another person may even find adorable.
Welcome to Get The Ick, where groups of friends can have humorous conversations about these differences of opinion and you can score points based on how accurately you can predict what seemingly innocuous things horrify your opponents (and in some cases, which things they actually find a little endearing).
Game Setup
Each player is given a double sided cardboard component in their colour. There is an ick emoji on one side and a heart-eyes emoji on the other. The first player draws three ick cards, each of which has written on it a scenario that may cause “the ick”.
The player with the cards also takes an ick token, a love token and two neutral tokens.
Gameplay
Each player takes turns to secretly place their tokens face down in one of the following two ways:-
1. If they find all three cards distasteful, they vote for the one they would hate the most and place the neutral tokens on the other two cards
2. If they actually secretly love one or more, then they place the ick token on the one they hate the most and the love token on the one they love the most with one of the two neutral tokens being placed on the remaining card.
You’ll notice that the Ick token and at least one neutral token are mandatory. The rule sheet strongly encourages players to not place the ick token first every time so as not to give the game away.
The other players then vote on either where the ick token is or where the love token is. If they get the ick right, they gain a point. If they get the love token right, they gain 3 (but the love token is optional so there is much less likelihood of one being there).
The player with the cards, who didn’t vote, gets points equal to the number of correctly placed ick votes on their ick token but only if 50% or more of the players correctly guessed their ick. They also gain 3 for a correct guess on their heart token, which incentivises them to get one out there if there are any scenario cards they dare admit to secretly liking.
Who Is This Game For / Not For?
I have had a chance to play it with a range of age groups and whilst everyone has liked it and enjoyed it to some degree, my 19 year old daughter and her friends absolutely loved it and played through all 100 scenario cards in one sitting.
As age went up, people enjoyed it less. My 69 year old father in law didn’t particularly find many of the scenarios gave him the ick much if at all. And for myself and my friends in our 30’s, it was in the middle.
Other than age considerations, it’s not for someone looking for something deep, tactical or highly replayable. This is a novelty party game that in the right group will lead to several fun gaming sessions and provoke hilarious anecdotes about similar things happening while on dates making it perfect for non-gamers.
It would also work great for people who want something light to start off a gaming session with relative strangers to break the ice and get to know each other a little, or for something silly and entertaining to finish off a games evening with.
Replayability
With just 100 scenarios in the deck, a group of four players will get two gaming sessions of four turns each, meaning you could completely finish the game in those two fairly short sessions. A lot like some of Big Potato’s other games (looking at you Herd Mentality), the long term replayability only comes from playing with a different set of people.
Therefore the replayability for someone who plays games with the same group of people every week isn’t there. But the person who buys it and takes it to several different parties to play with multiple groups will get exponentially more value out of it.
Final Thoughts From Me
A fun silly game that’s very easy to teach and understand and leads to a lot of laughs in the right group. There is next to zero set up and tear down so it’s super easy to get it to the table. It’s absolutely ideal as a gift for a teenager or someone in their twenties though as age increases, enjoyment may dip, depending on the player.
Once the cards have all been read and voted on, Get The Ick isn’t replayable with the same group, but if you have a lot of people you can play it with, that value goes up and for the price and how unique it is, I would definitely recommend it if what I’ve written about it sounds like your cup of tea.
