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Players: 3 to 8 (ages teen to adult)
Playing Time: approximately one hour (varies with the number of players)
My stylish 12-year-old would rather receive two peacocks than a pair of designer jeans? You learn quite a bit about your friends and family while playing GiftTRAP.
When we first unwrapped this game, we found cute little gift bags in assorted colors underneath a game board—and my teenage son wasn’t too sure about this one. Each gift bag contains markers and tokens, and every player gets two markers: a Give marker and a Get marker. The dealer then lays out gift cards, ranging anywhere from toe socks to a Paris shopping spree. Each player secretly assigns a Get token to designate whether a gift is “Great,” “Good,” “OK,” or “No Way.” Then players give gifts based on how they think another player (or recipient) will rate them. Sorry—even if two players would love that huge diamond, you can only give it to one of them.
Your markers move around the track based on your success. For example, if you give a player a gift that he designated as “Great,” you advance your Give marker four spaces. He, in turn, moves his Get marker four spaces. Your marker can even move backwards if you give or get the wrong gift. I guarantee this will happen more often than you think.
The winner is the first player to have both their Give marker and Get marker at the Gifted Zone. It took the four of us a while to comprehend the game, but once we did, it provided hours of fun. The gift cards are double-sided, so there are more than 500 gifts—and a lot of surprises. There are also optional levels of play.
We found an error on two of the tokens, but we were easily able to fix them with a felt marker. The game is packaged very well to limit the loss of game pieces and to ensure durability.
Important: As noted in the rule booklet, a small number of the gift cards are adult-rated. The company suggests that you remove any cards that you feel are inappropriate based on age or sensitivity. I highly recommend that you go through the cards ahead of time, as you may feel uncomfortable giving Grandma or your teen a Dominatrix or Vasectomy.
We thoroughly enjoyed GiftTRAP and are looking forward to more amusing evenings around this board game. Maybe my husband will give me that romantic weekend in Venice.
