0
0
Players: 2-8 adults
Playing Time: 1-2 hours
What in the world does “sybarit” mean? You might be surprised to learn that a sybarite is “a person devoted to pleasure and enjoyment.” If you love the good things in life, then you’ll be enticed by this trivia game, which focuses on the pleasures of food, drink, and social activity.
The parts of the game are fairly simple. There are playing cards, trivia cards, a scoring pad, and a pencil. The playing cards come in four suits, which correspond to the four trivia categories: food, drink, etiquette, and general topics. Players choose one of the playing cards and one of the trivia cards from the top of their corresponding decks. The playing card selected determines the category of the question on the trivia card. From there, players choose to answer the easy or hard question for their category. Easy questions earn you only one point, and hard questions earn you three points when answered correctly. At the end of the game, the person with the most points wins.
By letting players choose the difficulty level of their trivia questions, Sybarit allows the players to engage in a certain degree of strategy, which is refreshing in a trivia game. Another unique addition is that players are given control over the length of the game from the start. Using all of playing cards will result in about a two-hour game. But if players prefer a shorter game, they can simply cut the deck in half.
However, the game’s rules present some extra twists and turns that may add some confusion and complication to game play. While the Joker playing cards add a little extra excitement by inviting players to choose their trivia category for that round, each color (red, blue, yellow, and green) has its own set of rules. Some are easy: a red Joker, for instance, will give you double points if you answer your question correctly. But other Joker rules are much more complicated. For example, a green Joker allows you to “win the points plus or minus the points either won or lost by the previous player” if you answer correctly. Answer incorrectly and you “score or lose the same points as the previous player.”
The situation gets even more complicated when you’re instructed to keep your playing cards to add to your score at the end of the game. This, of course, involves another whole set of rules on how your playing cards add to your score. While the concept is different, it becomes both overwhelming and time-consuming, as players attempt to keep track of the additional scoring rules.
Still, trivia and party game fans alike will be able to forgive the complex scoring system and embrace this game as a refreshing retreat from the usual pop culture trivia game. Get your sybarite friends together for a game of Sybarit, and you’ll truly enjoy testing your knowledge of the chic and sophisticated pursuits in life.
