We have been avid fans of Richard Osman’s House of Games for a long time now. It’s standard tea time viewing in this house. I love the mix of games, the contestants and pitching my wits against the questions as the show airs. Would it work as a board game though? I was interested to see how well the series would adapt to the board game format. So when I was offered the chance to review a copy of the game, I jumped at it. Read on to find out how we got on and what we thought of the game as we played it.
If you have not watched House of Games, this is the simple premise: the contestants either pair up or go against each other to answer or solve word-based tasks for points. They do this over the course of a week, but each programme can be watched on its own. Each day the winner of that day’s programme gets to choose from a selection of branded, rather kitsch prizes with the House of Games fondue set being my personal favourite. The boxed version follows the same premise, only you won’t play it over a number of days and the prizes are up to you.
There are six categories or rounds to choose from and a final seventh round, Answer Smash, which always ends the game. Four of the rounds are chosen at random and slid into a card holder – this determines the order of the rounds and the rounds that are actually played. Now it suggests that this game can be played by 3+ players. But it’s better played as a group of five (or more in pairs so 7,9, etc.). This is to make it work better as some of the rounds are played in teams and one of the players acts as the Question Master.
Each round has four questions asked, and the fifth round is always the same but also has four questions – points are gained for correct answers and whoever has the most points at the end, wins. The prize is a Richard Osman-themed cardboard trophy.
Richard Osman’s House of Games is good fun, but I’m not sure how good the repeat play value is. I think there could do with being a few more different cards for the various rounds, to keep you playing longer. That said, I don’t think we’d often have the right number of people in the house to play this at its best, so perhaps that wouldn’t be that much of a concern.
One of the joys of the game for me is that it isn’t a straight forward quiz game like say Trivial Pursuit. The questions are a bit different and will give your brain a work out in a quirky way.
I’ve got good news for readers, I have a copy of Richard Osman’s House of Games to give away to one lucky reader. Enter via the Gleam widget below.
Richard Osman’s House of Games Board Game
Competition Terms and Conditions
1. No bulk, third-party or automated entries allowed.
2. Entrants must be aged 18 years or older and resident in the UK.
3. The winner or winners will be chosen by a random draw using the competition widget.
4. Promoter is responsible for fulfilling the prize and full contact details of the winner will be passed onto the promoter to enable prize fulfillment.
5. The winner’s name may be published on this site.
6. Competition closes at the end of Sunday 3rd October 2021.
Disclosure: I was sent a copy of the game for the purposes of this review.
Wow, this prize is fabulous!
The game sounds amazing
This looks fantastic!
We love playing along with this after tea.
A fun brain workout sounds good to me. Thanks for the review and giveaway.
I love this quiz on Tv and think this would be great to play
This looks a fabulous game to play
We love Board games, they take the kids away from electronics and challenge their imagination xx
great prize!
This looks fab for my next family holiday
Great, count me in!
this looks awesome
We love watching Richard Osman’s House of Games in this house too! Plus we are big board game fans. It would be interesting to see if the board games holds our interest like the TV show does.
Brilliant prize
This looks so fun i would love to win
Love a good family board game
This looks great. I love playing games like this when I’m with my friends.
Sounds fab! Count me in.
Fantastic Prize keeping my fingers crossed ……..
Cool giveaway love it seem like cool game.
This looks like a great addition to our family Game nights
Sounds a great game and my grandsons have said they would love it
Never heard of this till now, sounds a fantastic game to play with the family at Christmas.
A great game with plenty of interesting thins to do
Looks like a great game. We’d love to play this.
This looks lots of fun
This looks great, would love to play it xxx
This looks great, I love collecting games for family get togethers – such great entertainment and lots of fun!
This is the sort of game we love to play.
We love board games in our house and haven’t played this one so would be great to win
Love this show, would be fab to play for ourselves
Great prize. We are always looking for fun and challenging games to play as a family.