Word Slam Review – High-Speed Shouting for the Whole Table

Running a board game blog, and being deeper in the hobby than a mole in the Kola Superdeep Borehole, there are expectations around what games I should play and like. But fun is fun, whether that’s counting mega credits in Terraforming Mars, or starting a round of Word Slam by yelling exactly that.

Word Slam!

But before that happens, players break into two teams and select a clue giver for the current round. Between them, they take the top card from the answer deck and determine which of the 6 options is the answer for this round.

Once they both share a sly smile and agree that the clue is achievable. Then…

Word Slam!

With just those two words, your table bursts into life. Clue givers are sent into fits of sorting and displaying story cards. See, although they can’t speak or gesture, they still need to get their team to guess the answer. To this end, they have several decks of story cards broken into nouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions. They must bury through these decks to find the right combination of words.

As you can imagine, these story word decks aren’t super comprehensive and don’t translate one-to-one with the answer. So instead of giving your team the details they need, you end up describing the answer as though explaining it to an alien. All of a sudden, it’s not a barrel, it’s a wooden liquid cylinder. Or it’s not sunshine, it’s not night sky bright.

Clue givers keep searching, placing and rearranging cards until one team guesses correctly. That team keeps the card, then a new clue card is drawn, clue givers change, and the next round starts. The team with the most cards at the end, wins.

Hey, that’s my clue!

Word Slam is a simple game, but terribly fun. Once those magical starting words are uttered it becomes a chaotic mess. Yet there’s also something clever about how it plays out. Where both teams are trying to find the same clue, but with wildly different contexts.

So when one team guesses the answer they’re also giving hints to the other team. Given its real-time nature, these guesses come in fast and furious. As such, many of my Word Slam games ended not because of the brilliant clue-giving, but because of the other team’s guesses in conjunction with the story cards provided.

One example of this was when one team started putting together the words job and dead. Meanwhile, my team’s clue giver put together sport and event. For this, I guessed wrestling, which was wrong. But it gave the other team enough context to correctly guess Undertaker.

I love this aspect of Word Slam, and it’s why it’s one of my go-to party games for large groups at the moment. Not only that, but the real-time aspect means it doesn’t succumb to other issues usually incumbent in party games.

Think about a game of Codenames, there’s a lot of downtime while the clue-givers think up their clues. Additionally, they’re on their own. And a bad clue-giver can ruin the game. This isn’t the case in Word Slam, as you can still glean a massive amount of clues from the other team’s guesses.

Another big plus is that it’s a far more forgiving word game than others in the same genre. With all the story cards being basic English, and clues ranging from beginner to super dupe advanced. You don’t need an English PhD or to memorise the dictionary to do well.

Getting your fill

When it comes to fun, Word Slam has that in spades. The only blemish on this simple game is how many rounds they want you to play. The rules suggest your first game should last 10 rounds and after that, 25 rounds.

That’s insane.

I’ve played Word Slam 5 or 6 times now, and maybe once we’ve made it passed 10 rounds. Because usually by the time you’ve done two laps of the table, you’ve had your fill and need a break.

Thankfully, there’s no commitment to finish. At any time you can stop, count your collected cards and declare a winner. Like So Clover!, it has that feel of an activity. Where you could play 3 rounds, or you could play 50. Just play until you’re satisfied, and then move on.

Otherwise, I love the energy and silliness Word Slam brings to a game night. Where you can set up and get the game running quickly, and everyone is involved and having fun with it. And for a party game, that’s exactly what you want.