Quirk! The Family Card Game With A Difference! Age 5+ (Sent for review).

Independent Toy Manufacturer Emmerse Studios have sent us 2 of their new Quirk! Card Game packs to take a look at. Suitable for up to 6 players aged 5+, Quirk! promises to be a very different sort of game which is funny and easy to play, and accepts you for being totally odd. In fact they encourage it...

We've been sent Original Quirk! and Quirk! Legends to review. Each pack contains Instructions and 56 Cards including:
39 Character Cards (13 different characters).
7 Tactic Cards
7 Skip Cards
3 Defence Cards

This is an ideal travel game as everything is contained within the pack of cards. The aim of the game is to collect Quirks. A Quirk is a group of 3 matching Character Cards. The person with the most Quirks at the end is the winner.

The Instructions sounded confusing, so we did what we always do when bits don't make sense and started playing. It was instantly obvious and made perfect sense. I suspect my description will be confusing too, so I'll be brief.

Your minimum hand is 3 cards, and this is what you are dealt to start. The aim is always to create Quirks of 3 matching Character Cards, or steal them from other players using 'Tactics Cards'. Harsh tactics!

Play goes in turns clockwise and the active player chooses a Character Card from their hand. It may be a 'Sound Card' or 'Action Card' or both. Without using words, the player describe the card to another player of their choice. If that player recognises the actions or sounds and has any of the matching Character Cards, they must hand them over.

Once you have a set of 3 matching Character Cards, called a Quirk, place it on the table face up. Other players can now pinch it from you by playing the correct Tactics Card instead of a Character Card, but if you have a Defence Card, you can stop them. You can also make another player miss a turn if you have a Skip Card.

At first there's just a lot of 'picking up cards' because no-one has the Character Cards you want and no-one has collected any Quirks. After 5 minutes it begins to speed up and hot up, and cards start to change hands.

Obviously the way to win is to remember what cards other people ask for, so you know what they have in their hand. I had the advantage at first because I realised this straight away - it didn't take the boys long to cotton on though!

In original Quirk! you can become a Super Model, a Cat, an Elephant or many more characters and we played this version first, but we found Quirk Legends much more funny and more to my boys' taste. We had some very impressive Demons, Princesses and Evil Villains.... Not usually very scary though...

An easy-to-play game which allows everyone to ham it up with their best overly-dramatic performances. There's a good level playing field and children can win as often as adults. It's a great one for shy players as you really can't go wrong with your character performance, the worse or more strange it is, it's usually just hilarious.

Perfect for 2-6 players of all ages 5+ and multi-generational play, Quirk! takes around 30 minutes for a game and can be played anywhere - although younger children may need space to lay out their card hand rather than holding them all. It's actually a lot calmer than it looks, and ideal for a lazy afternoon.

Quirk! and Quirk! Legends are available to buy now from some independent games stores or online from Amazon, but the best value way to buy at the time of typing is via the Quirk! website at £10 each with £3 UK postage - where you can also find out more and even make suggestions as to which characters you'd like to see in future Quirk! games.

We were sent our Quirk! Cards Games for review.