Don’t just break the ice, absolutely shatter it in our Curious Humans review!

Meeting people for the first time can be hard. You can get nervous, flustered, I mean what do you even talk about? How do you… break the ice? Well, there’s a card game that might just help you with that.

Curious Humans has been dubbed “The Ultimate Icebreaker Game”, giving people the ability to find out about new people and hopefully make new friends. This Aussie-made game might be the answer to your troubles, so follow our review as we take a look at the ultimate icebreaker game.

Curious Humans Review – How to Play

The premise of the game is super simple. If you’ve ever played the game “never have I ever” it’s basically a card game version of that. From 2 – 10 players are each dealt 7 statement cards, one “true” card and one “false” card with the rest of the statement cards face down in a deck.

The person whom the group knows the least about goes first. The active player chooses a card from their hand and plays it face up, these could be along the lines of “I’ve seen a ghost” or “I had an imaginary friend as a child” and then the rest of the table has to guess if it’s true or false using their cards.

Once everyone has guessed, the active player reveals the answer using their true or false card and then the discussion starts as you get to know the person. If half or more of the table guessed wrong, the active player gets a point and it moves on to the next person once the active player picks up a card from the deck so they have 7 cards in their hand again. The winner is chosen once someone has 7 points. 

Curious Humans Review – Cards and Customising

In the base game, there are 4 different categories of cards, all colour-coordinated:

• Green cards are known as “everyday” cards. These have statements that are fairly basic and mundane, fun for all ages and events.
• Yellow cards are from the awkward category, these cards get a little more interesting but are still tame, statements like “I have spoilt a tv show for someone on purpose”.
• The blue cards are where we diverge into the more risk categories as these are the controversial statements such as “I believe animal testing is an acceptable form of medical research”. These cards can start to get a little dicey if you’re not with the right group.
• Finally, the red cards are the sexy statements, such as… Well, I’ll let you use your imagination. There’s also one final type of card which is known as “twisted” cards. These aren’t statements but actions. Stuff like “everyone give a card to the person on your right”, something to add a little extra interaction.

The best thing is the game can be fully customisable. You can take out a category if you’re not with the right kind of people. At a work function party? Take out the sexy ones if you think it’s too much for the work environment. Personally, when I played a game with friends we took out the everyday category as we felt they were a little too mundane for us.

You can also turn it into a drinking game if you’re of age. Simply have that when the active player wins a point, everyone else takes a drink. If you want to customise your experience even further, you can get one of the game’s expansions. I’m quite fond of the “Aussie Humans” expansion myself for the simple fact that it turns the true and false cards into “nah yeah” and “yeah nah” respectively.

Curious Humans Review – Final Thoughts

I found Curious Humans to be really entertaining and easy to pick up and play card game. As mentioned earlier, we took out the everyday cards and thoroughly enjoyed breaking the ice! We didn’t even stop at 7 points, we went until the deck was completely gone and by the end of it, many laughs were had.

This can be a new alternative to Cards Against Humanity when getting a game night together, and of course, we always love seeing Aussie-made games getting more of the spotlight. 

So, why should you play Curious Humans?

• You enjoy games like Cards Against Humanity but want something different
• Asking intrusive questions with people you’ve just met gives you a kick
• Looking for a creative way to break the ice

But why shouldn’t you play Curious Humans?

• You prefer just talking to get to know people
• Bit of a wallflower? This might be too much for you

A big thank you to the Curious Humans team for sending us a copy to review. If you want to get your own version you can purchase it via the official Curious Humans website with their expansions. And for more tabletop content, be sure to join the Qualbert Discord and check out the rest of our card game reviews!