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Time's Up! Party

Times Up! Party is the latest release from Repos Production – the family fun-orientated tabletop games developer which has Just One and the multi-award winning Concept under its belt. But there are no new concepts here. Times Up! derives from the classic parlour game Celebrity.

What exactly is a parlour game, I hear those of you unfamiliar with Jane Austen novels ask. You’ve actually been playing them your whole life – games such as Wink Murder, I Spy and Twenty Questions, which emerged in the Victorian era when people hosted frequent soirees, and were boxed from the late 1920s onwards. Celebrity, like Charades, has people split into teams, normally pairs, who must give clues and indications for someone to guess the correct answer.

In this version, each team has 30 seconds to go through a stack of cards, describing or acting out the name of a celebrity. The team with the most points at the end of the game naturally wins. Times Up! puts its own spin on the gameplay by incorporating three separate rounds with increasing difficulty. The first round lets the players speak freely to describe the celebrity. The second round then restricts the players to just one word. The third round restricts players even further by making them mime and make sound effects.

The game comes neatly packaged and with score sheets and a cloth bag to make it easy to take to parties. But what really makes the game worthwhile is the hundreds of celebrity names it covers. Covering all categories, one minute you’re describing George RR Martin, the next miming out Big Bird. The list is extensive and up to date, with pop-culture figures ranging from Bruno Mars and Groot to the weird and wonderful, such as Cthulhu and Barry Scott. Yes, that’s right. Cillit Bang’s Mr Barry Scott. Try miming that one out!

Of course it means the game won’t age well, but with no complicated rules to follow and a format familiar to everyone, Time’s Up! Party will provide some immediate fun during the generational clash of gatherings over the impending festival period.