Card Game Review: Game of Ham

If you are easily offended or have any triggers, this review may not be for you and you might want to look away now.  But if you have an open sense of humor and like to have a good time, then keep on reading.

The Game of Ham ( Hating All Mankind)  is an adult board game/card game that is similar to games like Cards against humanity but with a twist.  Game of Ham is fill in the blank with inappropriate reply cards, but with the addition of a 3 piece game board and a booklet that comes with many different options to play.

The rules of the game are easy to follow. One player begins by drawing a gray card and reading the prompt out loud to the group. The other players then select a pink card from their hands and playing them face down (same as CAH). The first player then shuffles the cards and reads each one out loud, then selects the card they liked best.

Each of the gray cards has two numbers on it. When a player wins the gray card, they pick one of those two numbers and then move that many spaces on the board in any direction (vertically, horizontally, or diagonally). There are seven different types of spaces you can land on.  A space with a number on it lets the player move that many additional spaces. The white space is a checkpoint. There are ways of being pushed back to the last checkpoint if a fellow player decides to attack you.  Or if a player lands on top of another player’s piece that player gets sent back to the last white space they passed. Dark gray spaces are like the white ones, except there’s only one dark gray space, and there are very few cards that send a player back to it. The gold space is the goal of the game. You need to land exactly on the gold space, they win.

Game of Ham includes

This is an “adult” game but with all our lockdowns and social distancing we don’t have any adults to play with, so I asked my kids to play with me. My kids are 10, 11, and 16 but like their parents have a very strange sense of humor and are used to this kind of thing. They had a great time and enjoyed it so much I found them playing on their own later in the evening just having fun.

With that said this was a fun game for us adults as well. I can see if being a lot of fun once we can hang with some other adults.  Because there are many different variations of play also helps keep the game exciting and fresh for multiple plays. I also like that because of the different variations you can make this game as short or long as you like for how much time you may have available.  There are also some fun facts at the bottom of the cars that I found fun and interesting.

I might suggest not trying to read the entire rule book through all the variations at once. This can start to feel overwhelming, especially if you’re not used to reading so many rules for a game.  Instead, just choose which style is best suited for you and just read that section. You can also go to their website and download Game of Ham for free so you can play with your family and friends over zoom.

How to Play Game of Ham video