Phraze Craze is a multi-player word (and phrase) guessing game for the iPhone. It’s a very fun option for any group of people who enjoy this type of game – if you like the board game ‘Taboo’, you should enjoy this one for sure.
I’ve also found it to be a big hit as a family game, at least in my household – both my wife and 5.5 year old daughter enjoy this one a whole bunch.
Here are some of Phrase Craze’s features, per its App Store description page:
- Over 3,000 words and still growing – in the full version – there is also a ‘Lite’ (free) version with a more limited word set
- 5 exciting categories for game play
- Audio timer and buzzer for exciting game play
- Visual timer which can be toggled on/off
- Built-in scorekeeper
- Built-in tutorial
The object of the game in Phrase Craze is to get your team-mates to guess a series of words or phrases by describing them or acting them out – and in your describing efforts, you cannot use rhyming words, give letters of the word, or say part of the word.
Once you set a category and tap to start the game, you’re working against the clock – trying to get your team to guess as many words / phrases as possible before the timer runs out (after 45 seconds). You get both visual (if you leave them turned on via the game’s settings) and audio indicators as your time is running out – the ticking sounds get louder / closer together as time is running down, for instance. You also get a loud blast from a buzzer when your time has run out.
You can hit the big right-pointing arrow at the bottom of the screen if you want to pass on a word that you just don’t think you’ll get …
The 5 categories that you can choose from at the beginning of each round are: Sports, Animals, Around The House, Entertainment, and Around The World. Each has a good, broad set of words and phrases to be guessed, some quite easy and some really tough. You can also choose to pick ‘Everything’ and get a set of words / phrases from any of the categories during a round.
The intended way to play Phrase Craze is to alternate quickly between two teams, taking turns holding the iPhone and passing it between the teams – something like this:
In our house, we’ve never bothered with that particular structure for the game – in large part because there are three of us. We simply take turns on which one of us is the describer and which two are the guessers – and it’s still a barrel of laughs for us. The categories offer good variety – my daughter loves animals and has to be persuaded to do the other categories; my wife is, shall we say, a little weak on sports – so it’s a good laugh to do that one. I’ve learned, for example, that Vince Lombardi is ‘the guy with the hat’ – apparently that would’ve worked much better than my range of clues like mentioning Green Bay Packers or Super Bowl wins etc. And the Everything category is a good challenge for all of us.
I believe this is also working as a very good educational app for my daughter. At first she only wanted to be a guesser and was very shy about being the one giving the clues. Now she’ll dive right into either, and is actually pretty good at giving the clues – especially in her favorite Animals category.
We started with the free Lite version of the game, found we liked it a lot and wanted the bigger pool of words, and switched up to the full program. We’ve been continuing to enjoy the game for several weeks now – it’s a frequent after-dinner, before bed, pastime for us.
If you like word guessing games, this is a great one to look at, especially since you can grab the Lite version and give it a whirl to make sure you enjoy it.
You can find both Phrase Craze Lite (free) and Phrase Craze (full – for $1.99) in the App Store now …
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TAGS: iphone apps
