This game was kindly gifted by Helvetiq via Coiledspring Games . All opinions are ours and our reviews are always honest.

“It’s nice to see you, to see you nice!”

No, we haven’t resurrected Bruce Forsyth, although he would be right at home with the game we’re reviewing today. It isn’t ‘Play Your Cards Right’, but it is “the hilarious game of more or less”, Chit Chat. Let’s get right in. 

👥 1 to 8 players

⌛ 15 minutes 

🧠 8 years+

Gameplay overview:

In Chit Chat, players work together to arrange general knowledge question cards in ascending order based on their numeric answers. To play, players draw a random Reference card, which shows a number ranging from 39 to 1,050, and place it in the middle of the table. They also shuffle the Question cards and draw 8, which forms the Question stack for their game. 

Players then work through the 8 questions one by one, deciding what they think the answer is, and placing the Question card where their guess fits numerically in the sequence on the table. So, in the first round the players decide if their answer to the first question is higher or lower than the Reference card. But for the next question they have to decide if their answer is higher, lower or in between the Reference and the first question card. It continues in this fashion (without checking the actual answers yet!) until the players have placed all 8 cards.

Once placed, cards can’t be moved other than when placing subsequent cards in between them, with the exception of the last chance which allows players to move up to two cards before checking the answers. 

Then it’s time to see how well you’ve done! Going from left to right, the questions are flipped one at a time to reveal the answer. Scoring is simple: the group starts with 10 points and deducts 1 point for each card to the left of a revealed card that shows a higher number than it. This is tricky because if you get an answer really wrong you could lose multiple points as the card could be lower than multiple cards to its left.

Our thoughts:

Chit Chat introduces an interesting and engaging twist on a trivia game. It’s less about knowing the exact answer, more about knowing (or guesstimating!) the scale of the answer relative to others. This made it more engaging and accessible by design: we rarely knew the actual answer. Especially when it was just me and Lauren playing! We still tried to work it out logically and place it to the best of our abilities which was a nice change as we wouldn’t have been able to do that in a standard trivia game. Lauren and I played Chit Chat during a visit to my dads, and he couldn’t resist getting involved when we were debating the answers. 

We had a good laugh, but I would definitely say that the fun does rely on the group’s ‘chit chat’ as they are discussing the answers. It would probably be a bit of a dry game if you played it straight without any silly suggestions, cheeky banter or lighthearted debates. It’s a fun game, if your group is willing to have fun with it.

There’s a fun level of anticipation when you reveal the answers one at a time and see whether you’ve ‘played your cards right’! It’s super satisfying when you realise you correctly placed multiple cards that are really close together in value. We also like to hunt for that Brucey Bonus and guess the actual answer for each card before turning the card over to reveal what it is, which we felt added to the experience. 

We were a bit confused by how Chit Chat is marketed. On the box it describes itself as “the hilarious game of more or less”,  and the questions are described as being both “quirky” and “crazy”.We’d argue it’s not inherently funny, and while there are a few silly questions,  most questions are quite dry and feel like standard trivia fare. For example, it includes questions like “how many albums has ABBA released?” or “How many people survived the sinking of the Titanic?” But like we’ve said, we enjoyed playing Chit Chat and found it’s the players that add the humour. But as it is, we think the game description gives a false impression to buyers who may expect sillier or even risque questions. 

We did have a couple of niggles with some of the questions we came across. While there is a range of questions based around the world, there were a lot of American-based questions that required a much more specific knowledge of US geography/culture (like “How many stitches are there on a regulation baseball?”), so they felt much harder to guesstimate as non-Americans. There were also some questions where the answer was based on a US statistic, but the question didn’t indicate that at all, like “how many books does a man read over the course of his lifetime?” – your answer to this question would be very different if you’re thinking ‘in the world’ (as the question would imply). Using a slightly modified question set based on where the game is being sold and adding ‘In the US’ to the unclear questions would help. It also would have been nice to see a specific source listed on the answer side.

What we like:

• With simple rules, and engaging gameplay – it has proven to be a good one for family gatherings even with those family members who are less likely to game. 

• We had a good laugh whilst playing Chit Chat, both as a pair and as a group, but recognise the fun you have does depend on the players involved. It would probably be a bit of a dry game if you played it straight without any banter.

• We got a real buzz from dramatically revealing the answers, especially when we correctly placed answers that were super close to each other. 

Considerations:

• While we enjoyed it and had a laugh, the humour is brought by the players more than the questions themselves, which were often standard (serious) trivia. So the marketing of it being “hilarious” with “quirky” questions could be a bit misleading.

• There were a few American-based questions that we felt required more niche, specific US knowledge, and other questions that were US based but didn’t specify (almost treating the US as default).

Final verdict:

With simple rules, and engaging gameplay, Chit Chat is a light-hearted game to bring out at family gatherings or to round off a gamesnight. I think the debate-inducing gameplay makes it an excellent alternative to traditional trivia games like Trivial Pursuits after a Sunday roast or over the festive period.

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Shortly after playing Chit Chat with him, Matt’s Dad unexpectedly passed away. Matt will forever hold on to the memories of playing Chit Chat with his dad, and is grateful that its engaging nature drew his dad to the table one last time.