Endless Games did a nice job of summing up the game play of their new board game, “Name 5,” in the title so this review was pretty short, but the game’s inventor, Brian Turtle, was nice enough to share how he came up with the game.  Here’s what he said:

“Yes, I thought I was a one-trick-pony after having initial success as an inventor with The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and never writing a “sequel”.  But lo and behold, much like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, Name 5 is a parlor game that my friends and I would play while waiting for the bars to “get going” back in my young, single Jersey Shore days.  We would have a few Budweisers over rounds of “Name 5 movies with Kurt Russell”; “Name 5 songs by KISS”; “Name 5 actors from the TV show TAXI”… and so on.  The game was always there long after those summers were traded off in favor of fatherhood and “responsibility.”  Mike Gasser (Endless Games “el Presidente”), Kevin McNulty (VP of Sales), and I would challenge one another with Name 5 categories all the time until one day Mike finally chimed in with, ‘Guys, we play this game all the time. Why don’t we box it and sell it. We are a GAME COMPANY after all!’ So that’s what we did!”

Overall Name 5 is a fun listing game, but the testers felt that some of the topics were just too darn easy even with a 30 second time limit!  During the first test, each team only lost one Name 5 challenge each: “Bon Jovi Songs” and “NFL Hall of Famers.”  This made the game feel like winning was going to be determined by rolling high, winning “Flip Flops” (where two teams go back and forth – sometimes for quite a while) and it ended up being a battle to complete all five of the categories on a single card in 90 seconds at the end.  It wasn’t bad – sometimes it was just too easy, but the second go around we changed the rules slightly and allowed the card-reading player (or team) to PICK which topic they wanted to give their opponent (on wilds it was a choice between two topics).  With the change I felt like my brain got more of a workout and it added a nice element of “stump your neighbor” that everyone really liked.

I urge you to try Name 5 out.  It’s a fun party game that everyone can be good at —and if they’re too good, do what The Game Aisle testers did and stick ‘em with the hardest topic on the card!

Name 5 Stats:

~$25 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, AreYouGame.com right now and Toys ‘R Us in the fall
2 or more players
~30 minutes as long as someone can do that last card!
Ages 12 and up