One of our family’s favorite party games is Telestrations. It’s a hoot every time we play because things never turn out the way they start.

So when we heard about Sketchy Tales: Disney Edition by Big Potato Games, and thought it seemed a lot like Telestrations, we were happy to give it a go.

I mean, why not take a crack at seeing how mixed up our Disney drawings could get?

And we’re happy to report we’ve had plenty of laughs with Sketchy Tales!

 

How to play Sketchy Tales: Disney Edition

Sketchy Tales: Disney Edition is a super simple game to learn, understand, and play.

To begin, each player takes a player board (the boards with large numbers and a Disney character on the back), a clip for their board, and a dry erase pen.

Each player then draws a double-sided Character card and a double-sided Action card. They secretly choose 1 of the 2 characters as well as 1 of the 4 Actions listed on the cards they drew.

Then everyone begins sketching!

Players draw the Character doing the Action they chose on their player board. Once everyone has finished their drawing, the pass them face-down to the player on their left.

Then everyone looks at the drawing they received, takes a blank sketch card and clips it over the drawing. They then write in words what they think the drawing is about. Once everyone is done with that, they again pass these boards face-down to the left.

Players then take another blank sketch card, clip it in, and then draw what they read. Players continue this alternating cycle of drawing and writing until their original board comes back to them.

When everyone gets their original board back, players take turns revealing the story that has developed from their original character and action. The player sharing also chooses their favorite drawing or written description and awards a point to the player responsible. If the final card matches (or almost matches) the original, the player gets 3 points.

Players then wipe everything down and do it all again.

The game ends when a player gets 2 more points than the number of people playing.

 

Can the whole family enjoy Sketchy Tales: Disney Edition?

Sketchy Tales: Disney Edition is a great game to play with the whole family!

And in fact, the more the merrier.

Since Sketchy Tales is at its best when the drawings and descriptions get crazy, the more people there are playing, the more iterations will take place before they get back to the original owner.

Plus, you don’t have to be an artist to enjoy playing the game. In fact, not being able to draw well often makes for the funniest moments.

The game comes with 60 Disney characters (30 double-side character cards) and 120 possible Actions (30 double-sided action cards with 2 on each side). So the possible combinations are endless!

We really like the combination of choosing both a Disney character and an action for that character to perform. Inevitably, they’ll be crazy actions and you’ll scratch your head trying to figure out how to draw that character doing the action.

The benefit that the person that starts each drawing has is that they get to look at the drawing of the character on the card they chose. It’s much easier to draw Pumbaa when you can see him on a card vs. just receiving a description that mentions him. Because then you have to pull a visual from your memory on how to draw him.

Some characters will be more easy to draw from memory, like Dumbo. But those Disney princesses can be a lot tougher to distinguish one from the other when you’re receiving sketches from other players.

Another thing we really like about the game is that it’s simultaneous play.

There’s no down-time in the game because everyone draws and writes descriptions at the same time. So there’s no sitting around and waiting for your turn, because there aren’t any “turns”.

Overall, it’s the funny combinations of characters and actions that really make this game shine.

When you get a drawing that you can’t make heads or tails of, you at least know that it’s a Character doing an Action. So you just have to figure out which character it could be and what that character might be doing. And that frame of reference gives everyone a head start when it comes to guessing the drawings.

Fun times.

 

How does Sketchy Tales compare to Telestrations?

Did our initial thoughts about Sketchy Tales being like Telestrations pan out? Yes.

That’s because both games are based on alternating drawing something and writing what you see — then passing it along.

The obvious main difference is the use of Disney characters vs. Things. In Telestrations players get a word or phrase to draw and people receiving the drawings don’t have a frame of reference. It could be anything. But in Sketchy Tales, it’s like a story you get to draw — someone doing something. We really like that.

Another big difference is in the components themselves. In Telestrations, the cards to draw on are spiral bound together in a booklet. Whereas, in Sketchy Tales, each card drawn or written on is inserted under the clip and added to the growing stack of cards under the clip.

We prefer the Telestrations spiral bound booklet over the individual cards. The biggest issue is that when you add a card under the clip, the card below often gets smudged. And if not when inserting the card, they can still get smudged when pulling them all out at the end of the round.

Then there’s the scoring.

When we play Telestrations, we don’t keep score. We just have a great time playing. However, the rules do outline how to score — with players awarding points for the funniest drawing and guess in their booklet at the end of the round. After 3 rounds, the player with the most points wins.

Sketchy Tales likewise has players giving points for the card in their story they like the most. And they can get 3 points if the final outcome is close to the original. However, the game end condition is stated as playing to 2 more points than there are players. Which means if you’re playing with 8 players, the goal is to hit 10 points. And that takes a very long time for one player to get to — which far exceeds the 20 minute game time written on the game box. We found that one round with 8 players takes about 20 minutes to get through all the drawing, passing, revealing stories, laughing, and giving out points.

Our verdict?

We don’t see either game replacing the other!

We very much enjoy both games and will choose which to pull out based on who we’re playing with.

That being said, when it comes time to play, we’ll actually pull out both games — because we’ll want to use the spiral bound drawing booklets from Telestrations to use with the Sketchy Tales game play. And we’ll typically just play a certain number of rounds and see who has the most points.

 

How does Sketchy Tales score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

Sketchy Tales: Disney Edition scores high on our “let’s play again” game meter.

We love the game play of drawing and guessing. And we love the combination of Disney characters doing some crazy actions. It may be a bit trickier to draw and pack what’s in our mind onto the cards, but it’s a lot of fun trying!

It’s a great game to have on hand in the coming holidays when you’re spending time with family as well because it’s so easy to explain and play. The combinations of what you’ll get to draw are endless.

Grab a copy of Sketchy Tales: Disney Edition and have a great time playing with your family!

We’d like to thank Big Potato Games for a review copy of Sketchy Tales: Disney Edition.