Death by Trivia

this is a hard trivia game but its a lot of fun

At the end of the day trivia is trivia but there are a few things that make this unique.

There are two stacks of cards - those for the "living" and another for the "dead". Living cards show a single wound type at the top of the card, a penalty for incorrect answers, and typically have 6 choices randomly chosen by the person whose turn it is to answer (the next living person left of the active player). Most are questions but a few offer the chance to heal a wound, bypass a card or inflict an instant wound. It makes for a bit of randomness but spices things up.

Each player begins the game "living" until incorrectly answering enough questions to acquire one of each wound (stabbed, shot or poisoned) OR three of a single type, then "dead".

Turn are in clockwise fashion, including players who have "died". The spin is these players draw from the "dead" deck, chose any living player to answer and if incorrect, cause instant death. These are categorical cards (e.g., top 20 causes of death (yes/no)), typically numbered 1-20 which the player again chooses at random. This serves to both offer a different feel to the round and speeds up the game with added tension as it unfolds. There's also a chance of resurrection in this deck but the next wound taken means you're dead again. This mechanic is great in that it avoids player elimination - although you can't win, you still get to participate.

The rules are clearly written on two cards with included FAQ. The theme works well with the questions and are admittedly less gruesome than I expected. There are some pretty interesting facts and we found ourselves reading up on some of them out of curiosity. Questions range in difficulty from common knowledge to obscure and seem pretty evenly distributed.

Player count is probably best at around 4-5 but even 2 players is great. Since the game would end once one of the 2 players dies, I highly suggest the house rule game that you have to die twice. In this way when you die the first time you will still utilize the "dead" deck. It makes for some tense moments (e.g., if both players have died once, they are both drawing from the "dead" deck and it's sudden death - the first to answer incorrectly dies a second time and is out of the game.)

Overall, this is a lot of fun and I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys trivia with a touch of morbidity. Perfect for the Halloween season!

A fun, but morbid trivia game