Cranium Brain Breaks

Cranium Brain Break – 200 one-minute mini games
From Hasbro Canada

About the game

200 One-Minute Mini Games. Welcome to CRANIUM Brain Breaks! The game you can play in a minute - or enjoy for an hour! Get ready for fast, frantic fun that will have your family acting, sketching, sculpting, and word puzzling as you race together to beat the timer. With 200 different activities, a Brain Breaks game is always within reach - no matter how much time you have to play.

Contents: 100 cards, six CRANIUM Cubes, die, timer, CRANIUM Clay, notepad.  CRANIUM Clay net weight 56g.  2-6 players.

My Thoughts

First and foremost, I totally adore the presentation of this game.   Who can say they hold a brain in their hands?   Well the packaging of this game looks and feel like a brain.  

I love Cranium and wish I could play more often with people.  But when we have friends over, most of the time we just want to catch up on each other lives and playing games is not a priority.   But this game is geared toward people ages 8 and up.   So with two kids that will be in that age range starting in February, I am looking forward for playtime with the older kids when the younger ones are taking a nap in the afternoon.

The objective of the game is to work together to win as many cards in a row as you can.    With 100 cards, the cranium cubes and clay you can be guaranteed to have instantaneous fun no matter where you are.  And for those of you who already know Cranium, you will encounter the beloved Creative Cat, Data Head, Star Performer, and Word Worm.

The game is pretty easy to play.   The player who has the closest birthday starts and taking turns the players draw a card from the deck.   You choose an activity that you want to do and read it aloud.   Everyone has to work together to complete the activity before the time runs out in the timer…  If you win four activities in a row, you can finish the game.   Keep track of how many activities you’ve won and next time try to beat that record…

You can also play in two teams and had some twist to this game.   Each team draws five cards and picks seven of the ten activities to do.   Teams take turns in doing the activities.   The first team who successfully complete seven activities wins but careful you must win by two.   Keep taking cards from the deck until one team pulls ahead by two for the win!

Here’s a couple of example of challenges you will have to conquer with Cranium Brain Break.

• Roll the dice and start the timer. Work together to name prime ministers of our country.   Name as many as the number on the dice before the time runs out.
• Each writes a sentence using only the words below.  We don’t have to use every word.  When the time’s up, we share our sentences.   Word list:  belly, to, the, coat, wiggled, tried, reindeer, vase, water, around, bright, stormy, red, his, from, in, tiny, leaf, playground, saw

This game is perfect to bring at a retreat, on a trip, or on an evening with friends.    The packaging is very creative and the challenges are fun to do.   My only concern is that the notepad is quite small and I am wondering why bothering with it at all for this quantity of paper…   After all everyone can find paper in their house wouldn’t they?   So instead of including this tiny notepad, why not including more challenge cards and have more fun out of it?   Just a thought…  besides, there isn’t any pencil either in the game so mind as well grab paper and pencil from your house.  

Needless to say, I can see that this Cranium Brain Break will grab the heart of many Cranium fans everywhere as well as let a younger generation discover the fun that you can have playing with the Cranium products!

Cranium Brain Break is available at your favorite toy store.

Disclaimer: I received the product for review purposes. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.