Like all good party games, Flash & Furious is not the kind of game you want people to take seriously. It’s for fun. It’s to make you laugh. And that’s just what it does.
It’s a trivia game, is what it is, with 588 questions on 98 cards, and a noisy, increasingly irritating Flasher which turns out to be what makes the game as fun as it is.
You can play it with as few as two, but more is funner. Playing in teams is probably the most fun – especially if you enjoy collaborative chaos.
One player (unless there are only two) is the moderator. She selects the question (there are three on each card) and helps decide if the answers are acceptable. Much of the fun of the game comes from the questions. The rest, from the Flash thing.
Some of the questions are very specific and require familiarity with things that some players might find obscure (Facebook games, rides at Disney World), others are personal (things you do while no one is looking), and still others almost guaranteed to lead to insane laughter “things you name”).
The Flash thing has three modes: off, annoying, and on. The annoying, or “try me” mode is, apparently, the default – you have to take the thing out of the box to turn it off. A voice calls out to you saying: “hey, hi, you, yeah you, I’m over here, in the box, help, let me out, take me home.” OK, it’s funny. Especially the first time. I’m just saying.
Then there’s the actual “on” mode. There are four lights in the central dome, each with a different color, corresponding to the color of the button in one of the arms. Press the dome and something music-like starts playing, faster and faster and faster. Lights go on and off. If it’s your light you have to give an answer. If it’s your light again, you have to give another answer. And on and on until someone presses their button, affirming the belief that someone else said something wrong. The person playing referee makes the final arbitration.
It gets crazy, you bet. And it makes you laugh, oh yes.
3 AAA batteries included. From Patch Products.