Hedbanz Act Up Family Game Review
Disclosure: I received a sample of the Hedbanz Act Up family game from Spinmaster to facilitate this review, any opinions are my own.
If you have elementary school age children, you may have already heard about the original Hedbanz game. Players wear colored headbands, then kids pick a card from the pile, and without looking place the picture card on their headband. By asking questions to their friends, players use deductive reasoning to try and figure out what the picture on their headband is. For younger children this game is awesome because the cards have a word paired with a picture, so for those who aren’t able to read well, they can still play along, making it a fun, family game for all age groups. The original Hedbanz game is recommended for ages 6 and up.
The newest family game from Spinmaster Games in the Hedbanz family is Hedbanz Act Up. Players draw a card from various categories (person, place or thing), then without looking, place that card in their headband. After rolling a color coded die, the player chosen will silently act out what’s on the card, just like charades. Hedbanz Act Up is recommended for 2-4 players, ages 8 and up. It’s really easy to play out of the box, and game play can be as short or as long as the time you have available.
I will say from experience, though the children loved the concept of the game, acting without speaking some of these words was extremely hard for most of the children I played this with, except for the cards they personally identified with like Superman and spaghetti! So you may need to “stack the deck” by picking out some of the more identifiable cards related to your child’s interests. I also had to slightly alter the rules by removing the timer all together, and when playing with 3 students, I gave 2 of the 3 a chance to act out the picture. We used the game as an opportunity to have fun together, and also removed the winning/losing features by setting aside the tokens. Given that the acting out feature was a little challenging for some kids, we also had a lot of fun drawing the pictures on a white board instead of acting them out, which allowed the players to be more successful.
With these types of games, don’t be afraid to modify the games that you play with your family and children to meet their skill level. Even though we didn’t play the directions exactly as the instructions were written, we still had ample opportunities to get in some good laughs and work together as a team.
What’s your favorite family game?
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