Test Your Knowledge of Five Generations in GENSMAK!

Can you answer questions from the Greatest Generation? Or do you know all things Millennial? Test your knowledge of five different generations in GENSMAK!

GENSMAK! is a trivia game for 2 players and up, all about answering questions from 1922 all the way up to 2012. Answer questions outside of your own generation to earn bonus points!

Gameplay

Five decks are placed in the center of the table. Each one is a stack of trivia questions from a different generation. The back of each card says what category of trivia it is and if the question is easy, medium, or hard. A stack of bonus cards is set next to them. Players can either play by themselves or in teams of any size.

On your team’s turn, you pick one of the decks. A player from another team draws its top card and reads your team the trivia question. Each card has a hint, and you can ask for the hint. Teams are supposed to give their answer (or give up) in roughly 60 seconds or less. If your team is able to give the correct answer, you keep the card as a point. If you answered it without the hint, you take a bonus card. If the card was from a generation that no member of your team is part of, you also get a bonus card (so it is possible to win up to three cards on your turn).

The first team to collect 20 cards and one from each generation wins the game.

Review

GENSMAK! is a straightforward, simple trivia game that is very, very well executed. The generation twist is quite fun and helps to make room for everyone to bring something different to the team.

The hints are mostly all wordplay related, so you still have a chance to guess a card even if you have no idea what the answer is. This keeps the game moving and means your team always has a shot at answering a card even when you don’t know about the topic. This also means that a lot of the time when the answer is revealed, even when the answer is something you have never heard of, you still often have that great moment of “oh, we should have gotten that!” based on the wordplay and puns in the hint. Occasionally, some of the wordplay does require specific spelling, and it’s unclear if the person reading out the hint is supposed to stress that spelling or not or leave it up to the team whose turn it is to guess over the spelling.

The design on the card backs, showing the difficulty level as well as the category, is quite smart, as it gives players some information before choosing a card. Each deck also clearly marks which years go with which generation, which also avoids any needless debate over whether you should get a bonus card for answering out of your generation or not. The box is also quite well-designed, with built-in separators for the different decks. An impressive number of cards for each deck is also included.

There are even a few variants offered to mix things up, such as giving another team a chance to guess a card one team failed on or making the game easier by only requiring each team to guess cards from three generations rather than five. There is also a variant where you can spend one card in order to discard the top card of a deck. This gives you the incentive to go after more cards in the generations you’re more familiar with, so you can get rid of the tough cards from the generations you know less about.

While the player count is flexible, game time will escalate based on how many teams you have playing. You could adjust the number of cards you need to reach to shorten the game in those situations, but the rulebook doesn’t address this.

This is just a very straightforward, really well-produced trivia game. It is excellent for players who enjoy this genre, with a nice range of questions, and just a solid theme to hold it together.

Pros: Hint system is great, information on card backs, range of questions, number of cards

Cons: Unclear if spelling for hints should be stressed or not, game time escalates based on team count

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.