Snorta! (2004)

From the publisher...
Snorta! The wild game of moos, meows, and more! The Party Game where everyone is an animal...or at least sounds like one! Get ready for laughter as your friends and family suddenly start sounding like they were born in a barn!"

In Snorta each player is given a plastic farm animal (cute cartoonishly-designed ones by John Kovalic). In a "sound-off" everyone makes their animal's sound, then hides it in their barn. All the animal cards are passed out. Each player quickly flips over cards into a face-up pile in front of them, going around the circle. When a card placed down matches one of the cards already on the table, those two players rush to say the animal sound of the other player. (You don't make the noise of the animal ON the card.) It's hard to remember everyone's animal under pressure, so this speed and memory game is lively and funny to play. If you say the other player's sound first, you give them all the cards you've flipped onto the table in front of you. They then add them to the bottom of their hand. The first person to get all the cards out of their hand is the winner.

A book from the 1950's describes an identical game called Menagerie played with decks of regular playing cards. Everyone chooses an animal sound (domestic or wild), cards are placed on the table in turn; if there's a match you two make the other person's animal sound. Faster one gives their cards to the slower one. When you run out of cards in your hand, you win. What Snorta added, maybe, was the animal cards and limiting it to barnyard animals (though there was also mention of a similar older game called Barnyard so maybe not). And then the plastic animals and barns were added. Snorta also has one "swap" card where that player replaces the animal in their barn with a new one for added confusion.

Snorta was developed by two Australians in 1995 and was released that year in Australia. It sold there for several years and was then released under license in several countries around the world in 2004. In America it was adapted to a larger version which included plastic animals and barns. This concept was also adapted by other games companies in Europe and the U.K. This new version proved successful, winning U.S. Party Game of the Year in 2006, and followed with Party Game of the Year in Norway, Denmark and Finland.

Awards

2006 Årets Familiespil, Family Game of the Year Denmark
2006 Vuoden Perhepeli
2007 Årets Selskapsspill - (Party Game of the Year), Norway Winner.