How do you make a PhD student feel stupid? Play Backseat Drawing!

The game is produced by Out of the Box publishing and is designed for between 4 and 10 players ages 12 and up. Players team up and in each group one player must be the director and one the artist. The director of each team looks at a topic card, and their job is to direct the artist in drawing the topic. The challenge comes from the stipulations on the director. Directions can only be given in highly specific, non-metaphorical language, and it’s the job of the group to figure out just what the artist is trying to draw.

For example, let’s say that the topic card my director picked was “suitcase.” He would then tell me to draw a square on the middle of my dry-erase board. After that he would tell me to draw a small, upside-down “u” on the top of the box. Hopefully by this point I can figure out the shape he’s having me draw, but I found that sometimes depth and angle can make recognizing even a simple shape rather difficult.

I had a lot of fun playing this game, but I have to say that at times it got a bit frustrating. It’s going to sound stupid, but it took me a good twenty minutes to figure out that what I was drawing was supposed to be a boomerang. My only consolation is that my team got the point in that round. This does, however, speak to one of the weaknesses of the game: time. Maybe it’s because we were only playing with five people, but there were some rounds where it took way too long for us to figure out the topic, and I think that time limits would really help keep the game going. Backseat Drawing is a fun game, but not as good as some of the others made by Out of the Box. It retails for $24.99, and I would recommend trying it out before buying.