Bang and Twang family board game review

*This game was kindly provided to me by handiwork games as a review copy for free, but that has not changed my blog post/review

In Bang and Twang you join a folk band of questionable musical taste that, while not being attacked by dragons or making way for a vigorous bongo melody, must try to match the rhythm of the song in this musical family game.

You start the game with three central cards on the table, each with Bang on one side and Twang on the reverse. The aim of the game is to match the order of the Bangs and Twangs on the table with those on cards in your hand. On your turn, if you have the matching ‘melody’ on your card, you can bank it in your personal stash, collecting points as you do so. More likely though, you will need to first move or flip one of the central cards, hopefully now making the cards play to your tune so you
can bank your card. However, if you are lucky enough to have one in your hand, you become
the start of the show by playing a tune card, these have special effects like shoving everyone else off the stage and forcing them to listen to your three-hour long kazoo reprisal.

The first thing you notice about this game is the art. The cards are illustrated in a childish cartoon style which in my experience is more controversial than which type of Dorito is the best (my Mum really liked it, but ,my friend hated the style of art). Children will love it, but for others it will really turn them off as the don’t want to play a ‘kid’s game’ whereas games with a plainer style like Uno can be enjoyed by everyone. That being said the optional coins you can get with the game are
universally lovely (like spicy Doritos which everyone loves, and if you don’t you are bad and wrong).


But once you get past that and have pushed past a mildly confusing rulebook you get to, if I am being totally honest, a rather boring game. The main act of shunting around the middle of the table can get old very quickly, especially if you play more than one game at a time. Add to that, that the special tune cards are so few and far between that you can spend turns not doing something exciting and when you do get one, some of them don’t do that much (like just getting a few extra points). This leads to a game that is less like Beethoven’s symphony and more like the car alarms that wake you up in the middle of the night.

However not all hope is lost, as after playing several games we found an easy fix. If you add another one of the many sets of special tune cards to the deck, it improves the game tenfold. Now it is much more fun and significantly crazier, with interesting things happening every single turn, like you’ve added put the original game into hyperdrive.

Bang and Twang is, if you add in the extra tweak above, a pretty good family game. The fast, easy fun of Bang and Twang will definitely work for ages 7 - 12 (especially if you don’t use the more complicated special tune cards). However, I think for everyone else there are just some better other options of simple party games (like Dungeon Mayhem) that are a lot more enjoyable.