Sounds Fishy Game Review

Written by Charlie Pettit

When you bring a Big Potato game to a fun gathering of friends, you’re usually guaranteeing yourself to be the MVP of the night. There’s an almost immediate expectation that these represent the best of party games, ones which can be learnt in moments, and lead to much hilarity. As a result, I was borderline smug when the group pulled Sounds Fishy from the assorted game stuffed bags for life.

What is the Sounds Fishy Game?

Sounds Fishy is a bluffing style game, where you provide answers to a question. Depending on whether you’ve been distributed a red herring, or a blue fish (it’s never made clear why blue fish are more inherently trustworthy over say, a rainbow fish, but we move with the choices made), you either provide a false but convincing answer, or you read the actual answer from the back of the card. One player, having been designated question master, will know the question but not the answer, and will be charged with sorting the fact from fiction.

Playing Sounds Fishy Game

Once you've got your head around the Sounds Fishy rules, playing the game itself is fun, if a little counterintuitive sometimes. Instead of trying to find the truth (the single blue fish player), you’re trying to find as many red herrings as you can. The guessing player should bank their points before they hit the blue fish of truth to gain the most points, or lose them by stumbling across the blue fish.

It’s a different way of thinking to most bluffing games of this style – picking the wrong answers first – and on the first few plays with any group found players would occasionally forget, causing us to restart.

Winning Sounds Fishy

Then comes the scoring. After more plays than I should probably admit to, we finally cracked how the scoring worked, after initially just allowing the player who seemed to understand it the most to tell us how many points to pick up. Rationally, it makes sense, by which I mean the instructions are clear. However, it feels like you should be scoring for the opposite, or gaining points for a great answer, so it’s easy to get muddled. Winning in party games is a small part of the enjoyment you get from it, so whilst initially felt a little jarred, the game makes up for it.

Sounds Fishy Review

The game is fun because of course, the questions have a hint of silliness to them on most occasions, so providing a slightly absurd answer is often within the theming, and that's where hilarity then ensues. It’s easy to panic and struggle to provide an answer, but even some of those are labelled ‘that sounds so ridiculous, it might even be true’, meaning you’ll sometimes risk it for a biscuit on an entirely obscure answer. We giggled our way through the style of answer one player consistently gave, only to assume red herring – where miraculously, it was the one time she played blue. We questioned whether answers were based on video games, news pieces, strange stories, when they were true. We asked why in the world you answered that, debriefed the why’s afterwards, and found the game facilitated our fun perfectly.

Arguably the biggest setback is also a sign of a good game. There are 200 cards included, which is more than enough for casual play, but if you enjoyed it in the same way my gaming group had, with cards being so memorable, we’ll easily be out of cards in the next year. At present, Big Potato doesn’t offer the likes of card-only expansions, but given it is representative of wanting to play it frequently, it’s not the worst dispute to have.

Should you play Sounds Fishy? Yes

Beneath the silver scales lies the expected rainbow fish.

Shop for Sounds Fishy on Amazon

You should try this if you liked Snakesss, which is another Big Potato Game with an elected truth giver, bluffing, and unusual questions.

Designer: Rob Piesse

Publisher: Big Potato Games

Time: 25-40 minutes

Players: 2-4

Ages: 8+

Price: £45

What’s in the box?

• 9 Fish
• 80 Point tokens
• 200 Question cards
• Card dispenser

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