Raise the curtains, distribute the tickets—the show is about to start, right in your own living room.

Mix performing arts with charades and you get Buffalo Games’ Silly Street Animal Act, a board game that makes family game night a lot more entertaining. Players roll the die and the space their token lands on illustrates what action they’ll have to perform with the card they draw.

There are five possibilities with each roll of the die—players can either act, sing, mime, lose a turn, or “switcheroo” after they draw a card. To “switcheroo,” players pick another player to act out a card while only the person who rolled the die gets to guess. The show must go on until the last ticket is doled out, and players must fill their playbill with eight tickets from successful guesses to win.

The cards range from a variety of animals—everything from a parrot to a dog to foods such as a banana or spaghetti to actions such as driving a car and sweeping. The various cards combined with the different means of depicting them makes every round of play unpredictably hilarious.

Players could go from hopping across the room like a kangaroo one minute to singing a song about eating pizza the next.

The game’s goal is to inspire four traits in the kids who play: adaptability, creativity, bravery, and communication, and the game succeeds in doing just that. Silly Street Animal Act requires players know their audience, and kids might have to change the way they think and adapt to ensure the other players guess their card correctly. Creativity is required to communicate what’s drawn on each card, and also to understand what fellow players attempt to communicate during their turns.

The most important thing the game inspires, though, is bravery. Each turn requires a performance, and it can be scary for kids to put themselves out there, even in front of their families. But Silly Street Animal Act encourages them to do that in a more light-hearted setting and follow the lead of their friends and parents. The more times kids mime acting like a seal, the easier it gets and the more confident they become.

It might be difficult for younger kids to play on their own if they can’t read some of the bigger words, but adults can always step in to help and make it a learning opportunity.

Silly Street Animal Act is recommended for kids ages 4 and up, but the fun doesn’t just reach the youngsters of the group. Older kids and parents will have just as much fun as they go to desperate lengths to get the other players to guess their card.

No matter your age, and no matter how many times you play, with so many cards and so many ways to depict them, you’re bound to have new reasons to laugh with every round of the game.

About the author

Casey Holland

Casey Holland

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