When we were given the chance to review Googly Eyes, I was intrigued to see how it would live up to the Madhouse kids' expectations. After seeing adverts for it, Pierre had added it to his Christmas list (yes, he's already written his letter to Father Christmas !) and was utterly convinced that it was going to be absolutely amazing, but would it live up to his high standards ? Well, in a word, yes !
The basic idea is like a sillier, funnier version of Pictionary. You have a set time (with a VERY noisy timer) to draw what is written on the card and you can move around the board if the rest of your team manages to guess. The different colours relate to the differently coloured plastic discs that you need to insert into the glasses that the wannabe artist must wear.
Not only do these glasses make you look totally ridiculous, they also distort your vision so it's much harder to draw.
It's quite fiddly to swap over the lenses so we think it would be a better idea to include three pairs of glasses - one for each colour - which players could just put on as needed without having to swap over the plastic lenses.
As it was, half of the playing time was spent inserting and removing the plastic discs, although Juliette did discover a shortcut - anyone with glasses can just slot the coloured lenses into their own glasses. This is nowhere near as much fun though. What big eyes you have !
That's our only slight niggle though - the rest of the game was an absolute delight. If we weren't giggling at how silly people looked wearing the glasses, we were laughing at their attempts at drawing with completely blurred vision.
While some of the lenses make it hard to see anything much at all, others make you think that your lines are joining up when, in fact, they're totally separate from the rest of the drawing. This obviously makes it much harder for the person trying to guess the word on the card !
It's a game that the whole family can enjoy. It's quick to set up and there are no complicated rules to explain so if you're short on time, it's perfect.
It works best with a minimum of four players - two per team, with one drawing and one guessing - but you can play with two players at a pinch, as long as you're both honest and not playing strategically, pretending that you can't work out what any of your opponent's drawings are !
Age and drawing ability don't really matter that much so it's a great game for the whole family to play together - perfect for Christmas Day after everyone's stuffed out on the turkey !
It's quite an impressive feat to find a game that genuinely appeals to players of all ages, rather than one that the kids love and parents and grandparents play just to keep them happy.
Madhouse Daddy had to have a minor operation a couple of weeks ago, and while he was recuperating in bed, this was one of our favourite games to play to help pass the time.
You can trust the adverts - it really is as much fun as it looks !
star rating : 4.5/5
RRP : £19.99
Disclosure : We received the product in order to write an honest review.
This game looks entertaining. My kids would certainly love playing :-)
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