Review: What’s Yours Like?
Publisher: Patch
Year: 2007
Tagline: The Game That Tells It Like It Is

Cartoon man asking What's Yours Like? and woman saying things like It's hot when I wear mine

how we met

I have seen this game a lot at thrift and never picked it up. Bill picked it up one day when he was out. It is a good example of a game that I would not have purchased myself but where I ended up having a pretty good time in the end.

how it plays

Players take turns in the “hot seat,” during which all other players have viewed a WORD CARD. The hot seat player asks each of the players in turn, “What’s yours like?” The players answer and this continues round and round until the hot seat player successfully guesses the word on the WORD CARD. They are allowed one guess per clue, a clue being what the other players state. They get a point for each clue received before they guessed correctly. Players want as few points as possible.

The word Stove in the little card holder
The little card holder is handy to block the word from other players, but not really necessary

As an example, if the WORD CARD is “Hair” then players might say:
Mine disappeared when I was 40
Mine is always a mess
Mine isn’t real
I spend a lot of time on mine
and so on…

Players should choose a given number of rounds to play in advance. The player with the lowest score at the end of those rounds is the winner!

Dry erase boards
What’s Yours Like? also comes with dry erase boards, I think to take notes. But we only used them to track the score

Note: there is a challenge aspect to gameplay that allows a person drawing a CHALLENGE CARD to challenge another player of their choice. This puts both players in the hot seat. The first player to guess the word removes 2 points from their score. We did not play with CHALLENGE CARDS.

how it went

This game was ridiculous fun. A lot of the BGG comments are perfectly correct that it does not need to be a purchased board game. This could be a game played at bachelorette weekends round the world, and all that would be needed is for players to choose their own words and track scores with paper and pen (or phone or whatever).

The word is "Phone Bill"
What’s yours like?

We got to a point where we would tell the player how many words they are guessing. That just helps speed up the game when they are on the right track, but not exact.

Giving clues is its own kind of challenge. You don’t want to give the word away, but you don’t want the game to go on forever and ever. I suppose it’s fair to say players could ruin gameplay by forcing points on a player in the lead. So don’t play What’s Yours Like? with jerks and you should be fine.

The word "Hips"
A good example of an easy-to-ruin word. If you said, “Mine don’t lie” then BAM! Round probably over

The WORD CARDS have a purple and an orange side. The rules indicate that the orange is kid-friendly, but it often had the more interesting words generally so we eventually would choose which side of the card we wanted to use to maximize our enjoyment of the game.

The word is "Jewelry Box"
Another challenge. I don’t own a jewelry box and never have, but I chose to describe what I think jewelry boxes are like. Velvety, right?

There were some pretty impressive guesses during play. John was able to guess the word “Mother” after hearing only a single clue that I don’t think gave it away. I had two instances of guessing correctly after one clue (one obvious, one a little less so), so that was awesome.

The word is "Luck"
Mine is expensive

Some of our more interesting words included: Phone Bill, Lamps, Luck, Best Dream and Love Life, the latter which caused a little bit of angst when John said his is “like a bag of sand.” Evidently that is a reference to The 40-Year-Old Virgin but boy, that was tense for a moment.

The word is "Best Dream"
During this round Bill chose to describe his actual best dream, which was confusing and bizarre

We had a grand time. I super-duper won because Keri gave me some very handy clues. At four players, we were at the minimum. I think What’s Yours Like? could be good fun with even more players, and bonus points if they don’t all know each other super well.

play or pass

Pass. What’s Yours Like? ticks all the right boxes for a party game. The rules are incredibly simple. It requires some quick thinking, reading your fellow players and is entertaining. We enjoyed it. But the components are not really necessary, so even though I had fun I have to give it a pass. You could play just as easily with random words drawn from a hat like Charades. So pass it by on the shelves, but by all means play with paper and pen.

But the ultimate moral of the story: don’t judge a game by its cover. I’m going to keep doing it though. I do love a good cover.