Geek Out! Board Game Review

Year Published: 2013

Players: 2-99

Playing Time: 30 Minutes

Much like Anakin Skywalker, Geek Out was supposed to be the Chosen One. I saw Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop episode of this game, mentally compared it to my own experience as a geek and gamer, and knew I had found a match. Swipe right, you beautiful green beauty, you. Let me nerd out over your obscure questions as I dazzle my friends with the depths of my useless knowledge.

The fall from grace was almost immediate. I am not used to this. Sure, sometimes our initial perception of a game is off. But nine times out of 10, I can watch a how-to-play or runthrough and have a good sense of whether or not I’ll have fun.

I have rarely been so wrong.

Geek Out! Gameplay

Like the more well-known Trivial Pursuit, Geek Out features questions that have you claiming that you have certain knowledge. “I know six Avengers,” you might say. “I know 10,” the other team counters. Eventually, one team calls the other’s bluff…unless it isn’t a bluff. Then you have to actually name 16 Avengers (or whatever the number is up to).

It promises a party-game atmosphere, complete with bluffs, double-bluffs, or bids intended simply to pump the number up for the other team. If your team can only name six, but you’re confident the other team can name 10, you might try to tease it up to 15 before calling them out, in the hopes that you pushed the number high enough that they stumble.

The prompts range from sort of geeky to very geeky.

A Comparison to Pub Trivia

I used to be on a pub trivia team, and we had a blast. We also won a fair amount of the time. But the reason everyone enjoyed it is because everyone got to contribute.

This wasn’t because we all knew equal amounts of information, but because the pub night we attended did a great job of diversifying topics and questions so that a variety of people would have a chance to shine.

Nerd/geek questions were actually fairly rare, but this was when I was a lot more into sports than I am now. Sports tended to cover about 20% of the questions. I was our sports guy. It was a useful niche. We also had a history guy, a pop culture girl, a Disney girl, and a science girl. When necessary, I was our “geek” as well. We had a lot of bases covered.

The problem with Geek Out is that it’s a lopsided trivia night.

All For One? No, Just One For All

So I started playing, and for a short time, it seemed fun. Then I realized something: not many others were having the same fun.

See, when you’re pumping up the Batman villain list to 20+, you probably lost most of the group in single digits. So while you’re listing off those villains over a few minutes as you mine the recesses of your brain for just a few more names, they’re just sitting there feeling useless.

And if you’re salivating because you can name 20+ Batman villains…you were me before I tried to play with an actual group of fellow gamers.

We tend to think of gamers as “geeks” in a broad sense, but the ways in which those passions manifest is myriad. If you’re a savant in comic books, video games, fantasy and sci-fi, you’re going to be just fine in Geek Out. Sure, other topics exist, but they’re comparatively rare. So the history buff in your group may not have much to do for long stretches, or at all. Long story short, if you’re not knowledgeable in one or more of those specific areas, well, enjoy sitting around for 30 minutes, watching your friends look more clever than you.

Just as bad, the dice roll may stick you with a topic your team knows nothing about. “Give me five Street Fighter characters” it will demand. And your group of Gen-Z gamers (or, heck, maybe just people who preferred Mortal Kombat) will sit in silence, and you take your lumps for the round, without any chance to even guess.

To relate it back to pub trivia again, if you don’t know the answer to a question, you’re generally also just hanging out over food and drinks. It’ mroe relaxed. In Geek Out, though, if your team is stumped, it just creates an awkward silence.

The Point of Play

If you’re the type who will dominate in this game, I have a question: why do you play games? To win? To look like the smartest person in front of your friends? Or to have a mutually awesome time with friends?

If it’s the last of those, this game is a minefield of potential problems.

For me, a game that I will enjoy, but those I’m playing with won’t enjoy, is in fact a game I won’t enjoy.

The Niche Does Exist

Detractors are going to say they’ve enjoyed this game with large groups, and they’re not wrong. But they also found the right crowd for this game. If you have the right mix of nerds and geeks, Geek Out might be your ideal party game.

But there are plenty of other party games – hell, other trivia-style games – that are going to be more inclusive than this one, even among regular board gamers.

That fact makes this game impossible to recommend in a general sense, but easy to recommend in a specific sense. Just remember my cautionary tale. I game with a bunch of social, self-identifying geeks. This game should have been a safe pull from the shelf. I also played with a few different subsets of that larger group, to make sure I was being thorough.

I thought I and my friends were the correct audience for this game. The definitive THUD of this game tanking in our group provided dramatic proof to the contrary.

My experience, like anyone’s, is anecdotal. If someone wants to play this, and the group is amenable, I’ll relish the chance to dust off the cobwebs in my brain and name 16 superheroes with yellow in their costume, half a dozen Star Trek captains, or whatever the hell else the game calls upon me to do. But I also sold my copy once it became clear that my fun – or anyone’s fun in this game – is sometimes going to be at the expense of involving others in any meaningful way. That’s a risk I can’t abide with so many other excellent options on the gaming market.