I like to play board games and I like to talk to my friends about their experiences. I’m particularly interested in their thoughts and ideas about sex and themselves. When the makers of the Ohh…igen? (Ohh…yes?) board game approached me it captured my imagination for three reasons: first they are Hungarian, second one of the partners is woman, and thirdly they are also the creators of the highly successful party game Igen?(Yes?),
One night my girlfriend, my best friend, and I sat down to try out the game. We talk a lot about these things together anyway, so I was especially curious to see what new things the game would bring to the conversation.
Let’s start at the beginning: the game is absolutely high quality. All the elements are beautiful and sophisticated, which is the basis of the experience. The questions are very good. We skipped very few and there were plenty of themes to discuss—already when asking the questions, but also when we “analyzed” our own and others’ answers. There were some exciting surprises and these generated more and more questions, with Q&As often lingering between “official” questions.
One of the great merits of the game is that the questions don’t try to trap the players in the heteronormative world. Practically, we didn’t have to skip any questions because “this doesn’t make sense for lesbians”, which is typical from my experience with other similar games. The choice of topics and the wording of the questions shows the openness of the creators.
Image: Do you like to guide your partner during sex? Do you find hair repulsive? In your opinion, does your boss’s gender affect your work relationship? Do wounds make someone more attractive? Do you find swinger parties exciting? Is monogamy a good thing? In your opinion, can you feel desire for somebody for a lifetime? Do you find fat people attractive? Does it excite you to imagine having sex with a powerful person?
The gameplay was a bit of a hassle, dice like this, tokens like that, cards like that, cover here, vote like that, right side, left side, but because the questions were really good, they carried the evening.
Each round of the game is based on first asking a question from the cards, which everyone answers, hiding their responses from the others (unless someone finds the question really uncomfortable and can use a taboo card to skip it). Then everyone tries to guess how the others answered.
You can choose between two game modes for each question. In one, everyone responds on a scale of 1 to 6, where 1 is “Not at all” and 6 is “Ohh, yes!”, and then you have to say who you think answered the highest and the lowest number (which, for 3 players, is conveniently who said the highest of the other two). In the other game mode, you only vote with YES or NO, and then you guess what the majority answered. With 3 players, we didn’t really use this game mode. According to the rules of the game, this is the only game mode for two players. However, I think in the end everyone plays the game the way they want and I would choose the second game mode with a little modification.
The game is scored in a way that the more you guess correctly, the more points you get, but we played it just for the fun of the conversation, and didn’t score.
Next time, we’ll try it with more people. I recommend it even for partners to play together in two or with friends in small or big groups.
Translated by Amy Soto
