Make time for a Dinosaur Tea Party

When was the last time you had tea with dinosaurs?

If your answer is “never”, then it’s time to change that!

Dinosaur Tea Party is a fantastic family game of deduction that everyone can enjoy playing.

It’s also another game that quickly jumped into one of our most-played games of 2018!

We got a copy of Dinosaur Tea Party from our BoardGameGeek Secret Santa last month and it was an immediate hit. We’ve played it over and over and everyone we’ve introduced it to has likewise loved it.

So now it’s time to tell you what it’s all about.

 

How to play Dinosaur Tea Party

Dinosaur Tea Party is a light deduction game where players try to be the first to figure out 3 of the other guests’ names. Players do so by narrowing down the various traits of each dinosaur at the tea party to discover who the guests may be.

The challenge is that revealed traits are open information to all players. Thus, narrowing down the information helps others players as well. So there’s also a bit of a race to guess correctly before the other players do.

Setting up the game is a breeze.

All Dinosaur Tiles are placed face up on the table. Each player gets a set of Trait Tokens. And the Dinosaur Cards are shuffled together. Then 3 dinosaur cards are turned over one at a time and a random Quirk is placed on each of those three dinosaurs. Then all the dinosaur cards are shuffled again and one dealt to each player.

Players secretly look at the dinosaur card they were dealt — that’s the guest they are — and they’re ready to play.

There are 15 traits in the game. These traits show up on the dinosaur tiles as well as the dinosaur cards. And each player has a set of trait tokens that represent each trait.

The include things such as if the dinosaur is eating or drinking, what they’re wearing, the color of room they’re in, and whether they’re showing a tail, teeth, spikes, spots, or stripes. Oh, and they may also have a pet with them.

The game is played by taking turns guessing traits and/or guest names.

On a player’s turn they may ask one of the guests if they have a certain trait. That guest will answer either Yes or No. If the guest answers Yes, the active player gets to keep going. If the guest answers No, that player’s turn is over and play progresses to the next player.

In either case, the guest who answered takes their matching trait token and places it in front of them to indicate their response. If they answered Yes, they place it with the trait showing. If they answered No, the place it with the big X over the trait showing.

(Obviously, players must answer truthfully…unless they’re a dinosaur with a quirk (explained soon))

Instead of guessing a trait on their turn, the active player can also guess one of the guest’s name. If they’re wrong, there turn simply ends. However, if they’re correct, they take a sugar cube and that dinosaur tile is turned face down. The revealed guest also discards their dinosaur card and draws another (takes on a new identity) and removes all their revealed trait tokens in front of them.

When guessing a guest’s name, whether the player is right or wrong, their turn ends. If they’ve claimed their third sugar cube, they win the game!

Otherwise, play continues to the next player.

See how simple that is?

Of course, we also need to tell you about the dinosaur Quirks!

As mentioned, during set up 3 dinosaur get random quirks placed on their tiles. These quirks may cause these dinosaurs to give false answers — throwing a twist into being able to correctly deduce guests.

• Always Says No: When a player asks about a trait, this dinosaur must always answer No (even if the correct answer would be Yes).
• Always Lies: Whenever asked about a trait, this dinosaur answers the opposite of the truth.
• Switches Answers: When asked for the first time, this dinosaur answers honestly. Thereafter, they answer opposite of their last answer. Thus, they’ll continue to switch from Yes to No with their answers regardless of what the correct trait answer is.

Players continue taking turns until one player has correctly identified 3 guests (claimed 3 sugar cubes). That player wins the game!

 

Can the whole family enjoy Dinosaur Tea Party?

If you haven’t already guessed, we think Dinosaur Tea Party will be a hit with everyone in the family.

This light deduction game is just the right amount of deductive work for players of almost every age.

Since all information is open information (except for which dinosaur card each player is holding), the game is all about figuring out which traits to guess of which player. Should you keep asking the same guest more trait questions or moving on to another guest? You could narrow one guest down further, but if they answer No, then your turn is over and you’ve just revealed more information for the other players.

Inevitably, you’ll narrow it down to where a guest could be one of two dinosaurs. And then it’s all down to lucky guessing on who they are. If you get it right, hooray. If not, then you know the next player to go will guess correctly and gain a sugar cube.

It’s that light tension that keeps everyone on their toes.

It’s really fun when traits are narrowed down enough so that you can figure it out because of your own dinosaur traits. For example, one guest may be narrowed down enough to know it could be between two dinosaurs. But if you’re one of those dinosaurs, then you know exactly who they are.

Likewise, you may choose to guess traits of other guests based on which traits your dinosaur has so that when they’re being narrowed down, you know slightly a bit more than others.

And then there are the quirks!

Those add a lot of fun to the game. They keep the game from being straight out open information. To get that extra edge, players should always keep those quirks in mind. And we love it when we get a dinosaur card showing us we’re one of the dinosaurs with a quirk.

It’s also fun asking and answering questions with more than just “are you eating?” or “do you have spots” and “yes” and “no”. Instead we like throwing in more thematic questions and answers such as “Why on earth did you let your pet come with you? How disgusting.” and responding, “Oh, I’m sorry. You must have me confused with someone else because I most certainly didn’t bring a pet with me. My pet hates these type of parties.”

Dinosaur Tea Party is actually based on a Parker Brothers game from 1976 called “Whosit?”. However, Restoration Games has brought this game back to life in wonderful fashion. They updated the game play by tweaking some of the rules and streamlining it a bit. Then for fun, they tossed in dinosaurs to take the place of the humans and visually rocked it out of the park!

Overall, Dinosaur Tea Party is a fantastic deduction game for families!

 

How does Dinosaur Tea Party score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

Dinosaur Tea Party is another game that cries out for multiple plays in a row. We have yet to get away with just playing the game once. That’s because it’s kind of addicting!

It seems that win or lose, everyone wants another crack at it.

The game flows so nicely and even though players are taking turns, there’s really no downtime. Because even when it’s not your turn, you’re trying to work out who the other guests might be based on the traits being revealed. So everyone is invested in the game the whole time.

Playing multiple games in a row is also simple to do because there’s really nothing to set up between games. Simply turn all the face down dinosaur tiles back over, randomly distribute the quirks, reshuffle the dinosaur cards, deal one out to each player and you’re ready to go again!

Restoration Games did a wonderful job dusting off an older game, making some key game play changes, and bringing it to colorful life again. Yes, the addition of dinosaurs is also a huge hit in our book!

We highly recommend grabbing a copy of Dinosaur Tea Party for your family!