Monikers

Today I’m talking about Monikers, and this is gonna be a little different from a normal review. Monikers is NOT family-friendly. But a couple days ago one of my 5yo twins told me that Monikers is his favourite game.

How did this happen? It started with the box. My kid likes looking through the shelves and asking to play my games that look neat. He was attracted by the colorful box with a vampire on it, and he also loved that some people became headless when you open the box. When he first asked to play it, I told him he needs to be able to read and we couldn’t play yet, but when he continued showing interest in it I decided to say yes.

If you’re not familiar with Monikers, it’s basically like Time’s Up (or Celebrities, or Fish Bowl, for the public domain ones). A team party game where you’re guessing names/phrases/words. It’s 3 rounds – the first you describe the phrase and can say anything (except the phrase itself). Then after you’ve gone through the deck (of 40 or so cards chosen for this game), you do round 2, which is one-word clues. But you’re guessing the same phrases as in round 1. And then in round 3 it’s the same phrases again, but no talking, just charades for clues. So it’s a mixture of a charades-type game with memory. Tons of fun and Monikers is one of my favourite party games.

But before this I had never played Monikers with family (maybe my parents, but all adults). Monikers is different in that it contains a lot of internet memes and non-family-friendly things. It also has paragraph descriptions of the word/phrase which are sometimes not family-friendly (even if the phrase itself is). So I went through the cards to find some words that were appropriate for my kids. Now I have ~60 cards (out of the ~500 cards it comes with) that I can use with them.

Since my kids don’t read well, here’s how I played it with them. I chose a deck of 10-15 cards, didn’t use a timer, and I just gave all the clues with them guessing. No scoring or anything. My kids love guessing and they were doing well with the memory part, and they especially love the last round a lot. But after I went through the whole deck (over multiple plays), they wanted to also give clues. So I let them choose something and give me clues for round 1. Once I guessed, I wrote it on an old business card, and they drew a picture of it so they could see what it was. I also wrote some easy-to-read words for them (they’re learning readers). So then for rounds 2 and 3 they could draw the cards, read/see what it is, and give the clues! They’ve been loving playing both “regular” Monikers with me giving clues and their version (basically Fish Bowl) with their chosen words.

I would definitely recommend playing this with kids. Not Monikers specifically, but the public domain Fish Bowl/Celebrities where you pick words yourself. Both because it’ll be more family-appropriate, but also kids will be more invested in things that they get to choose and like (my kids added a lot of characters from Wicked and the Wizard of Oz because that’s their latest obsession). It’s a lot of fun, and it can also be good reading practice!