HERD MENTALITY

Parties, by their very nature, bring people together (well, except for that one person who always ends up in the toilet crying). So in a sense Herd Mentality is a bang-on-point party game, seeing as it’s all about being of a mind with your fellow players. If you’re one of those kids who likes doing their own thing, you’ll lose. Simple as that. Being a social quiz game, everyone involved will mostly spend it answering silly questions – secretly and written down. Questions like, “What is the best sauce?” or “Name something you take into the bath with you.” Of course, you can be clever-clever and say things like, “Newman’s Own Blue Cheese Dressing”, or “a copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War,” but that won’t get you very far. The idea is to come up with an answer which most people in the room are likely to give, because the most common answer earns you cows, and you need eight cows to win. So you might be better off saying “Ketchup”, or “a rubber duckie”; though of course that depends on who’s in the room. Conversely, if you’re the only person to give a certain answer, you have to take the squishy pink cow, which blocks you from winning the game (though you can still earn points). The fun, obviously, comes from trying to read the room, as everyone effectively tests themselves on their knowledge of their fellow players. But that’s complemented well by Big Potato’s bright bovine aesthetic, complete with cartoon cow tokens held in a cardboard paddock, and the aforementioned pink Friesian, which stands proud on the table like a kind of inverse trophy. It might cost you the game if you’ve got it, but at least it means you’re one of a kind. Hopefully not to the degree where you’ll spend the rest of the night in the toilet crying...