Never Have I Ever: The Board Game!

This game was designed and intended to be used by 2-8 players ages 21 and up, since it's meant to be a drinking game. The goal is to get to know the people you're playing with, and get fairly sloshed in the process. Unfortunately for some the cards are fairly tame, although that might be a good thing for people who don't want anything wild they have to answer. Another plus is that this game, like most drinking games, can be altered to be played with something other than alcohol, or you can opt not to drink at all!

With this game you get the rule sheet, game board, dice, 8 different colored tokens, 100 I've Never cards, 10 cards where you can make up your own questions and "consequences", and a coupon for 25% off any one item on the company's website.

The rules are fairly simple, you start with the youngest person in the group having them roll the dice and move their token forward that many spaces and complete the action on the space they land on. After they've completed their turn, the person to their right goes next. The goal of the game is to move your token from start to finish, and maybe get a little drunk along the way. You can land on all different spaces ranging from "Draw an I've Never card" to "move forward/back a space," "all drink," "switch places with any player,and a few action spaces like "pick someone to do a truth or dare" or "spin 5 times in a circle."

Every 5 spaces or so you'll run into "pick a card." This is the most fun part of the game. Every card you get has a question (or the option to make up your own question) and actions you must perform based on your answer. The cards are all phrased "I've never done this or this or this" and while it seems up front, it can be confusing. You have to remember to take the statement at face value and say if that's true or not. So if the card was "I've never left the house without wearing underwear?" and I had done that, then the statement is false and according to that card, I would take two drinks. The statements themselves are all over the board and fairly tame overall. There are of course some sexual ones, but there are plenty of non-sexual ones too like "I've never been fired?" and "I've never forged my parents signature on a check?"

The game is designed to be played with 2-8 people, but the more people you have the more fun it is. With less people if you're drinking alcohol you'll probably end up drunk quicker, but with more people you'll get to have the fun of learning about each other. With three people the board game portion lasted 15-20 minutes or so before the first person reached the end, but you don't have to limit yourself to the board either. You can choose to get rid of it after one or all of the players have reached the end, or you can just leave it out from the get-go and take turns flipping the cards and answering accordingly. If you'd like it to be more all inclusive you can play it more like the "original" Never Have I Ever game where one person can say the action on the card and then everybody can drink if they've done it. You can also substitute alcohol for any beverage you want, or skip that portion entirely and just answer the questions.

The rule sheet has some frequently asked questions like "how big of a drink do you have to take?" It also lets you know that you can go to their website and buy more cards to act either as a replacement to the included set or as a booster pack. It also features a game variation where you play it the same as above, only in addition to taking their drink for doing an action, a player must also remove one piece of clothing.

The game has a nice design to it. At 18"x18", the board is big enough that you shouldn't have a problem reading things on it, but also small enough that you won't have to worry about reaching the other side of the board or the board taking up the whole table. It's made of a very nice and thick laminated cardboard and looks like it could handle being spilled on quite a number of times and hold up just fine so long as you wipe up the spill quickly. The cards are as nice as regular playing cards and barring you trying to tear them up or something, should also last a long time. The tokens should also last you a long time unless you manage to lose them, in which case you can replace them with anything around the house that's small enough to travel around on single spaces of the board. Like playing Monopoly with the dog, iron, thimble, and a thumbtack. Although if you're going to be drinking with this you should probably not use the thumbtack.

My friends and I had a lot of fun playing this, although to be honest, we got bored with the board pretty quickly. I was the first one to the finish line that time, and after that we just went around the group answering the questions and taking sips of our respective drinks if we needed to. While the content of the cards themselves was pretty good, it was also pretty tame and my friends have apparently come to expect nothing but raunchiness of me, so they were a little let down with the lack of "hardcore" sex questions. I have gone ahead and purchased the extra cards on the website for this particular version of the game, but I'm also thinking about buying the regular version as well. Since the cards were so much fun, we're planning on most future playings of this being just the cards and not the board.