Smiley Faces

By John Bolt

I could not help myself, when I found this online I had to get my hands on it. The art on the cover was just too funny to pass on this game. I mean it a Fantasy Flight Games it has to be fun right! I got it home and my son saw it and we could not wait to play. We opened the box and here is where the disappointment began..

Four to Eight players… Agh! I am a family of two.. “All is not lost son, we can learn the rules and show people how to play!” “Wow this is a big box… Maybe they have to more players inside..” (Twelve year old boy laughs). A Funny Emote card game this shouldn’t be too hard to find a group to play (waits one week to find said group..).

The box makes this a $14.99 game, without the box maybe $9.99 (found mine on sale for $7.99), but let’s face it this is an FFG product and they don’t skimp on quality. When it came time to play with my group of six people we read the rules and had a hard time figuring out when the “Round” was over. After a few hands of play we got the hang of it. The emoticons on the cards gave the players a lot to talk about, for about two “Rounds”, and then they became bored with the game. To be honest I had a hard time keeping them involved to the end, and these are the guys who love to open a new box. I was disappointed that we didn’t have more fun. I don’t think this was the all games fault, I just don’t think they liked it.

There are four suits in the game; Angry Faces, Happy Faces, Silly faces, and Sad faces. Each “Round” a suit is randomly chosen to be the best suit (plus one to all cards of that suit) and one suit is the worst suit (turned upside down and all card values of this suit are equal to zero points). Players try to get as many cards, of one suit, down in front of them as they can before the round is over.. The “Round” is over when all players have passed, they may chose to do this for several reasons. Players may pass because they have nothing to play or because one of the cards they have chosen to play makes them pass (”Mischief” cards). The “Mischief” cards are played to mess with the cards in the center and other fun things like that. At the end each round the person with the highest points wins that round. Players’ totals are equal to the values of the cards in the suit with the largest amount of cards in front of each player (which ever suit I have the most cards in will be the cards counted for points). There are other pieces in the game for keeping track of different events going on in the game as well.

The game art is very fun and well done. With any FFG the game is well made and the box is amazing as usual. Sadly I feel this game falls short of what I expected to open. Though I will say that there is room to make this game more interesting, maybe an expansion down the line will liven up game play a bit. After the jokes and the laughter was over (end of round 2) I felt I was left with a game that I might play once a year.

Smiley Faces Includes:

1 Rulebook

81 Cards, including

52 Suit Cards

18 Mischief Cards

23 Tokens and 8 Plastic Stands