We love playing games and I love it when I get a new one to review. The Pretender is a new game from Gamely, we reviewed another Gamely game back in April, you can see what we thought of Randomise.
The Pretender comes in a box, just a little bigger than a box of playing cards. It is indeed a card game, but it’s so much more. Here’s a brief description.
The Pretender is a hilarious social deduction game of mini-charades, bluffing and suspicion that will make you laugh and get you thinking creatively. Each round, every player has the same identity except for the Pretender. The aim of the game for the other players is to discover who the Pretender is, while the Pretender must fake their way through the game, escaping detection and trying to work out what on earth everyone else is miming!
In The Box
Quite simply you get a number of cards and a small instruction sheet. Each card has two categories and you get six of each. Each category has 10 entries to choose from. However, one of the cards does not have any entries, it just says Pretender 10 times instead.
The cards are all you need to play the game, well, along with your imagination.
How To Play
The rules are pretty simple and the game can be played by most ages. However, it depends on the players how cleverly you play the game.
The game is for four to six players and if you have less than six you will need to take away the excess cards, but make sure the pretender card is still there. Then the cards are shuffled and randomly passed to each player. One of the two categories is chosen before play and then whoever is chosen to go first will pick an entry from that category.
The pretender will not know what has been chosen, apart from the category, so they will be playing blind.
Each player in turn then mimes the chosen entry and the Pretender has to try and guess what it is for their turn. Or just wing it. When everyone has had their turn they players then choose who they believe the Pretender to be by pointing to them.
If they guess right the Pretender has one last chance to turn it around by correctly guessing what the entry was.
Example
The category chosen is sea creatures, and the entry chosen octopus. Each player has to mime octopus and the Pretender has to guess that they are miming octopus and mime it themselves. Of course this becomes very difficult if the Pretender is going first. Their only hope then is to pick any sea creature to mime and get away with it.
The players are faced with the dilemma, do they mime it really good so that they don’t get chosen as the Pretender, but risk the Pretender guessing it easily. Or, do they mime it obscurely so that the Pretender doesn’t get it, but risk being pointed out as the Pretender.
Winning
The winner of the game is either the Pretender, who doesn’t get spotted, or knows the correct entry. Or the other players for guessing the Pretender correctly and the Pretender not knowing what the entry is.
Conclusion
It’s a simple game that is not so simple. The rules are easily picked up but the skill lies in how well you play it.
The recommended age is 12 years but we played with an 8 year old. He found it quite difficult at first, especially when he got the Pretender card, he gave the game away immediately by exclaiming ‘my card says nothing but pretender.’ He did actually get the hang of it though after a couple of rounds.
We love that this is a compact game which can be taken anywhere and it easy to pick up and start playing. You can also choose how long you play for. It takes around 15 minutes for one turn, and you can have as many, or as few, turns as you like. We find that it’s only fair that we all get a turn at choosing the item from the category.
How to Get Your Hands on a Pack
You can buy The Pretender on Amazon.
This is an affiliate link.
The pretender is from Gamely Games and you can find out about this and their other games by checking out their Twitter, Instagram and Facebook
Other fun games from Gamely include Randomise and Soundiculous
Disclosure: We were sent this game for the purpose of this review, all thoughts and opinions are our own. This post contains an affiliate link to Amazon. This will not affect the cost to you if you choose to buy anything.
