Blockbuster is an amazing game that game that came out this year. If you are looking for a last minute Christmas gift, a game for any family dinner or an evening with friends, I recommend picking up a copy. It will take about half an hour to play and is for ages 14 and up. It says 4 to 8 players but I definitely think you could play with larger teams.

The theming for this game is just perfection. The blockbuster look and feel brings everyone back to a time when we would rent our movies. It’s the reason I bought this game, The theming made it impossible to ignore.

The concept also works extremely well. This is a game celebrating movies, yet you don’t have to really know a lot about films to win the game. A lot of movie games are trivia based, which is great if are really into movies, but this Concept makes it more inclusive to everyone.

So to go through the rules, split players into two teams. Each team will pick a player to start and then the game begins with a head to head battle. Turn over a head to head card to reveal the category. as soon as they think of a movie in the category, they shout out the title and hit the buzzer. The other player will have 15 seconds to name another movie. This goes back and forth until the buzzer goes off before a movie is named. The unsuccessful player loses the battle.

The winner gets to take 6 movie cards and look them over. They pick three to keep and give their opponent the rest. Both players place their three cards on the three spaces and the head to head winner’s team will get to guess first. Each team has 30 seconds to guess their cards based on their player’s clues. If the first team guesses all three with time to spare they can steal from the other team.

The categories are:

• One Word – only one word clues can be given. For example for the movie Babe the clue could be “pig”
• Quote – a quote from the movie. For example for the movie The Wizard of Oz you could say “There’s no place like home.”
• Act It Out – this is a charades category. So for the movie Jurassic Park you could …act like a dinosaur?

Obviously some movies work better than others in each category, making the head to head battle a pretty good advantage. Leaving your opponent the difficult cards will definitely help put you ahead.

The teams get to keep any cards they guessed correctly to start their collection. Once both teams have gone, new players are chosen to start another head to head battle and the game continues.

The first team to have one movie from each of the eight categories in their collection wins.

This game is perfect for the holidays. Even a reluctant player can easily join a team and play without having to commit. It’s also a game that works well for spectators, except they almost always blurt out answers. It’s light but with a content everyone loves and easily keeps people engaged. If you need an activity over Christmas dinner this is definitely the game worth pulling out.

If you like Blockbuster, try:

MTV – The Music Throwback Game