Words are something that I use almost every time I speak. I’m using words right now. So, you’d think that, by now, I would have mastered the process of getting them from my brain out through my mouth. But the party game Blurble is here to challenge your skills at this, to test whether you really are as adept at coming up with words as you think you are. Do you think your vocabulary is revolutionary? Then let’s take a closer look at Blurble, and find out I have a few choice words about it, and discover if this game gets its wings.

Blurble is a quick and simple party game all about coming up with the right word. In order to play, you’ll need the deck of 250 beautifully illustrated cards, a quick wit, and an even quicker tongue.

To play the game, select one player to start the person who controls the deck. This person is known as the “Blurbler” Hey, Bernard Games, I don’t want to be “that guy”, but I believe the correct terminology is actually “blurblarian”, from the Latin “en-blurble-ator”: one who blurbles. I mean, just because we’re playing a party game, there’s no reason be historically insensitive. And I should know, I'm insensitive all the time.

Play will consist of rounds of one-on-one challenges, starting with the Blurbler (or blurblarian) and the player on their left. The blurb-blol-ogist starts the turn by flipping the top card of the deck face-up. The blurb-ite and their opponent then race to say a word that starts with the first letter of the image on the card. Who ever does, takes the card and places it in front of them. When blurble-ing, proper nouns, numbers, and contractions are not allowed.

The first person to finish saying a legal word wins that turn, and then the en-blurb-lor challenges the next player, and play continues in this fashion until the one who blurbles is defeated. When that happens, the deck is given to the winner of that turn, and a new round begins. Play continues until a player has collected twenty cards.

Okay, so that’s Blurble. It’s simply rules and a deck of 250 cards with great illustrations. The artwork is consistent in its design. All of the illustrations are a uniform design/look. That’s nice, because if the look of the images was all over the place, it could have easily cheapened the look of the game. As it is, its consistent illustrations make it look like a cohesive unit, which adds some polish to it.

The game itself reminds me of what some have said about Splendor, in that it’s one mechanism, like it could be a part of a larger game that’s been extracted to be its own game. Blurble is straightforward, quick, and simple. Meant to be played fast, and light.

Part of the fun that we’ve had with Blurble is thinking of rules variations to try out. The rulebook encourages this too, and includes some suggestions to get you started, such as only allowing nouns or verbs, or words of a certain length. Some of the variations we thought of were saying words that started with the first two letters of the word in the illustration, animals that start with the same letter, or all answers must not only start with the first letter, but must also belong to a specific category, such as “things my dog eats that are not food”. It’s an expansive category.

Alrightie, now the big question: does Blurble get its wings? Well, to be honest, it’s so simple that, at first, I wasn’t sure what I thought about it. But then I played it with my second-grade daughter, and it was then that I really figured out what Blurble is all about. We played it again, I that time I recorded it, and I think the footage of our game in the video review demonstrates exactly why Blurble gets its wings.