The Sound Maker (also named What’s That Sound?) is such a game. One small side of rule explanation, about 15 minutes to play the game and unexpectedly funny for most players. In the game one of the players makes a sound effect that corresponds to an open card. All other players then simultaneously try to guess to which image this sound belongs to, and the fastest player who guessed right takes the card as a victory point.

That’s easy enough, right? And the rest of the rules is not much more complicated: First of all the imitator cannot select a card at her leisure. Instead, at the beginning of the round four cards are placed next to each other in a row. And the imitator then draws a sequence card that exactly tells her which card is chosen in the first step.

Click on image to enlarge!

To distinguish noises between four images is not too difficult, you might think. And yes, it’s true that the first step of each round is an easy challenge. But with the first player winning the round (and taking the won card) two new cards are revealed, and the next step begins. This goes on like this until there are eight cards on the table in the fifth step. After that it’s time to move the imitator job to the next player and the next round of the game begins. The game ends after all players once have been the imitator.

Although I’ve played several thousand games up to now, and I’m always interested in full-length boardgames that really challenge me, I’m also regularly looking for easy games with a high fun factor. Maybe The Sound Maker is not the real big-time in the long run, but at the moment I love to take the game wherever I go. Especially as a filler and family game (I even played the game with five year olds) the game is almost always a success.