Super Silly Stories: Apples to Apples for Storytellers
It’s well-documented by this time how much I enjoy storytelling games - or games that just generally encourage kids to use their creativity and imagination. And of course that makes a lot of sense considering the vast majority of what we talk about on Dad Suggests is books and board games. So it should come as no surprise that we’re very excited about a new game we’ve gotten our hands on called Super Silly Stories.
Disclosure: Super Silly Stories was shared with us by the developer. We only write about things our family loves, and all thoughts and opinions are our own.
In fact, we’re so impressed with this card game that we’ve decided to make it our Game of the Month for June. And we are definitely going to add it to one of my favorite board game articles we have - games that encourage storytelling.
Just to give you the idea of what you’re in store for with Super Silly Stories - it’s basically Apples to Apples with storytelling and funny stick-figure-based illustrations. If you’re familiar with Apples to Apples, you’ll be shuffled and ready to play within minutes of opening this game - and being ready to play that quickly with kids is obviously a huge pro for family game night.
If you’re unfamiliar with the way games like Apples to Apples operate, it’s very easy to explain anyway. Everyone chooses a card from their hand each round, except for the person whose turn it is to be the judge. The judge simply picks their favorite card, and the person who played that card gets a point. That’s basically the gist of it, and whoever has the most points at the end is the winner.
The points in Super Silly Stories are called gold stars, and they also function as a way to mix things up and add even more variety to the game. Each gold star card you earn also has something on the back that you need to read out loud when you receive it. Maybe everyone has to choose a card to pass to their right, maybe everyone gets to choose a card to replace, or maybe everyone just has to give you a pat on your back.
But of course there’s a very big difference between Apples to Apples and Super Silly Stories as well. Namely, this is a game about storytelling. Silly storytelling! Each round starts with a random “start card” to begin the story, and in the first round everyone plays a card from their hand that could build upon the start card. Then the judge picks their favorite card from the choices and places it next to the start card to continue the story.
This format continues for 3 rounds, and the final judge will then flip over a card from the “stop cards” for everyone to see how their story ends. One thing I really love about this concept is that, even though it’s a competitive game, you’re also ultimately collaborating together to tell these funny stories, and of course I’m a big fan of that. That sense of cooperative storytelling is always quite special for me.
There are a total of 350 silly cards with original artwork on them in the box. Our 8-year-old is a big fan of the game and the type of humor found in it. And I’m sure you can think of a little one or two who are perfectly targeted by the silliness found in this game. Think being slapped by penguins, being transformed into a giant dragon shark, or having a scary red-eyed bunny jump out and scare you. But suggesting that the humor is only targeting kids would be disingenuous as well, because I’m not immune to the silliness of this game by any means!
And, as far as age is concerned, you might first suspect that you’d need to be an independent reader to be able to play this storytelling game on your own. After all, you are picking and judging silly sentences. But each card also has a silly illustration on it, so - much like using Rory’s Story Cubes - our 5-year-old is capable of playing as well, just choosing all her own cards based on pictures, and doing her judging after someone reads her the options. It’s not completely ideal, but it’s absolutely another option on top of teaming up with a parent.
If you do happen to include a player who can’t read yet, and they’re basing their judging on the stick figure illustrations - you’ll simply have to adapt on those turns and choose cards you’ll think they’ll like. Which is of course what you’re always supposed to do in games like this - you have to know your judges! In this case you’ll have some people who will always choose the absolute funniest card, and others who like stories with the best continuity.
And that difference of opinion, coupled with the great variety of silly cards, is of course what makes Super Silly Stories so much fun. It’s impossible to predict how the story is going to go, and the developer claims there are 38 billion different possible stories to create, so the odds of ever repeating the same story are quite low.
Super Silly Stories is a great addition to our storytelling game arsenal. We have games that call for lots of imagination crafting your own story, and we have games that tell beautiful stories and include choices to be made - much like being inside of a book. But the way Super Silly Stories has bits and pieces of pre-made stories to stick together is something new for us, and a fun new approach to storytelling.
If you look at it from a gameschooling point of view, kids are getting plenty of practical reading practice - reading the choices in their hand every turn, and reading the choices of the other players when they are the judge. But they are also definitely exercising their creativity (and their humor!) when they have to pick their favorite way to continue the story.
The format and the mechanics of the game are tried and true. Lots of card games on the market work like this now because it’s simple to learn, elegant, and fun. And, much like all those other card games, the majority of the fun doesn’t actually come from trying to win or amass the most points. It actually comes from the gameplay itself - the funny choices to be made and the absurdity of the stories that you’re building together. And, in my opinion, that’s exactly what to look for in a game for family game night.
If you want to try it out for yourself, you can buy it straight from BeckBroJack here.
Do you like playing card games like Apples to Apples with the family? Have you tried Super Silly Stories yet? Let us know what you think in the comments!
