HedbanzActUpThere are plenty of board games in which the object is to crush your opponent, so it’s nice to find one that requires some cooperation as well. In Hedbanz Act Up!, from Spin Master Games for ages 8 and up, the object is to discard all your game tokens before anybody else. But the game play requires all participants to try and help one another towards this goal. Each player gets a different-colored plastic headband to wear, upon which they affix cards, and printed upon each card is a thing, person, or place. Everyone but the person wearing the headband can read it.

Now comes the cooperation: Players take turns trying to guess what’s on the card posted across their foreheads, turning in a token for every success. On each player’s turn to be Guesser, somebody else—based on a die roll—acts out the card. Similar to Charades, a lot of the fun is coming up with effective ways to convey a word. Don’t look to me for advice about that: During the demo game I played, my attempts to act out “earthquake” only received guesses of “zombie,” “heart seizure,” and “Godzilla.”

Meanwhile, for games involving 3 or more players, a particular roll of the die means all non-Guessers have to act out at the same time. It happened during the aforementioned demo game: I was the Guesser, and suddenly everyone else got up and started re-enacting the Belmont Stakes around my table (the word on my card was “jockey”). Hedbanz Act Up! strikes a good balance between collaboration and competition: You can help someone toss in their last token to close out the game, while simultaneously wondering how they could have confused your previous dramatic sequence for Godzilla. And how many games can claim that?

About the author

Phil Guie

Phil Guie

Phil Guie is an associate editor at Adventure Publishing Group. He writes and edits articles for The Toy Book and The Licensing Book. Phil also serves as lead editor for The Toy Book Blog and The Toy Report newsletter, and manages social media for The Toy Book. But of course, Phil’s pride and joy are his weekly reviews for The Toy Insider, in which he writes about video games, movies, and other cool things. His hobbies include comics, baking, fidgeting, and traveling to off-the-beaten places and making new friends.

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