Getting to spend time with grandparents is one of the most special experiences you can have in life. Learning from their experience, hearing stories of lessons learned and adventures taken is one way to really get deeper into their lives and learn about the history of your family. Today we are going to look at a game that just does that!
In the Palm of Your Hand is a new game from La Boite De Jeu. It is a designed by Timothee Decroix with art by Pauline Detraz, Gael Lannurien, Sabrina Miramon and Umeshu Lovers. The game plays 2-8 players in 30 mins.
Overview:
For the game In the Palm of Your Hand, players take turns being the either the child, the grandfather or witnesses who are all helping to get grandfather to guess the correct memory the child is trying to convey. Roles move around to different players on each team and the one with the most points wins!
Gameplay:
The game consists of 100 memory cards, 20 constraint cards, 24 rocket tokens and a storage bag with the 11 objects. First separate into teams of 2 or 3 players. Each team gets 6 memory cards and this is their shared hand of cards.
To play, the active team will choose one to be grandfather and one to be the child. The child will draw 1 memory from the deck and then attempt to get the grandfather to recollect it. To do so, the child will take any of the objects and attempt to mime out the memory on the grandfather’s hand while that person has their eyes closed. Any of the objects can be used in any order and style but must be played on the grandfather’s hand in some fashion. During this phase all players should be closely watching the mime motions.
Each player team will add a card from their hand to the one that was used for two different interactions between grandfather and child. This will now create a face up pile of 8 cards with the ones actually used and the ones added by other players. Now it is up to the Grandfather player to find the two cards the child used amongst the 8 and find them in order.
Once grandfather has chosen each card, the active team scores a point for each correct card identified and other teams also score 1 point if he incorrectly picks theirs. Games continue for two rounds so everyone has a chance to be Grandfather and the Child. The team with the most points wins!
Impressions:
I really enjoyed the way his game brings everyone around the table together and attentive to the story. When someone is telling the story of the card on grandfather’s hand, all eyes are tuned in to see what the person will do. This keeps everyone engaged and I love that in a bigger group game!
There is so much more to this game then just playing out the party aspects. There is an expert mode with constraint cards that make it difficult to tell the story for the child player. Things like use only these objects, or only mime on the fingers. It really ramps up the difficulty of a game like this. There is also a 2 and 3 player modification for making the game more suited to your group. My favorite part is that the memory cards are sequenced and when viewed in numerical order tell the story of grandfather Leon’s life and how it unfolds. I won’t spoil it for you, you will have to check it out yourself.
There are other games that I could compare this to for ease of deciding if it is a good choice for you but honestly it doesn’t play like any of them. It’s a unique and memorable experience that you have to try for yourself. That being said, games like Mysterium, Pictures and Dixit have some similarities in style and substance to this one to give you a place of reference to start from.
Overall I really enjoyed playing In the Palm of Your Hand with our game group and I know that you will as well. If you group loves to stay interactive and tuned in to each other this is a great choice to keep the party going. If you appreciate a good theme and story woven into your game, you will not be disappointed when you sit down to play. And if tactile and physical elements of a board game really sing to you, then have I got a great title for you to check out. So go out, give In the Palm of Your Hand a try and see how many memories you can create at your next game night!
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