Buffalo Games gave away copies of The T-Shirt Game recently, and I was a lucky recipient! Now normally this isn’t the type of game I’d seek out. I’ve played a few of Buffalo Games offerings before, to somewhat lackluster results. Imaginiff proved to have a bit of a nasty streak, and more sensitive individuals got downright testy over some of the comparisons imposed by the game. VisualEyes was more interesting, but spurred no less arguments over rules and results in folks who just weren’t on the same wavelength. So why did I bother seeking out this one?

Simple. I have a neighbor who loves these party-type games, and was desperately seeking stuff similar to Apples to Apples, but geared towards teens, or at least appearing more “hip”. I’m happy to say that The T-Shirt Game hits that spot perfectly!


Photo by BuffaloGameBuffs

The game consists of 70 T-Shirt cards, 209 Slogan Cards, and 77 scoring cards (Hot or Not). One person is chosen to be the judge for a round, and picks a T-shirt card to place on display for the group. These cards are clever cartoon depictions of funny events, and are PG-rated at most. I couldn’t find one card that any parent in my group would object to playing. The art is very nice and quite amusing!

Once a T-shirt goes on display, the rest of the group chooses a Slogan Card from their hand of 3 cards, and places it face down next to the T-shirt. The judge collects these cards, shuffles and reads them aloud and chooses one that best fits the picture, by whatever criteria the judge desires. It’s all about opinion folks! Popular, funny, ironic, or just plain weird – if the slogan fits, pick it!


Photo by kathn

The player whose card was chosen is declared the winner of that round, and gets to pick a points card from the Hot or Not cards. This is where The T-Shirt Game differs from the competition – instead of just collecting a certain number of winning cards, you need to collect a certain number of points, and these points are distributed randomly over a stack of cards. So, this means that you can be chosen the winner a number of times, yet not collect enough points to actually win the game!


Photo by pdclose

Wait a sec, that doesn’t seem fair, you might say! Well it’s exactly this mechanic that makes this game work so well with teenage girls! Certain folks can try to swing the game by voting for their favorite popular friend, but now it no longer guarantees a win! If Ms. Popular doesn’t draw the right Hot or Not cards, she can still lose to another player who makes luckier draws even if they’re chosen less times. Plus there’s some Boo-Yah cards in the Hot or Not deck that allow you to steal one of another player’s Hot or Not cards. All of this combines to keep everyone in the running right up until the end, and balances king-making nicely!

So while the true gamers among you might think that drawing random points cards is unfair, when faced with a group of cutthroat, peer-pressured teens, none wanting to rock the boat too much by not voting early and often for the most popular among them, then this method of randomly accruing your winnings works very well to let everyone feel they have a genuine chance of winning without alienating anyone.


Photo by pdclose

I’d suggest one change to the basic gameplay: There are plenty of Slogan cards in this game! So many, in fact, that starting with a hand of three seems like an unnecessary restriction of choice. So I recommend a starting hand of 5, to offer more choices. In this game, the more choices the better! The game seems to flow better when you have enough choices to feel like you have some variety, yet not too many as to cause analysis paralysis.

And that goes for the number of participants too. Like any party game, the more people playing, the better!

Great Review Diane! We also play with 5 cards rather than 3. This game was a hit over the holidays with family and friends. Similar to Apples to Apples but with visual appeal. The only downfall is the small amount of T-Shirt and Slogan Cards. After 7 plays, it is feeling pretty much played out. This game would be a true party hit if it had a larger number of cards.

Nice review. I'm glad you could use one of my images.

We've played this more than once and here are the observasions we've made:

1. Don't play with more than 6, there just isn't enough cards and it wears out fast.

2. We don't like the "Hot or Not" cards at our house, they seem to make the game longer and to us they are just dumb. From now on, when we play, we will score the "Apples to Apples" way. Whatever slogan gets picked gives that player a point. 5 points wins the game (or less for a bigger group or shorter game). There is no favoritism when we play so we don't have to worry about someone picking something simply because they know it came from a certain player.

3. My daughter suggested creating your own game called "Caption". Get pictures of the family or from a magazine and use the slogan cards from the T-shirt Game or make up your own. Play as you would for "Apples to Apples". I've wanted to try this, but I haven't had the time or energy. Maybe when it warms up and my body needs less sleep (I have MS).

I agree with Kathn - Love this game, but can't stand the "Hot or Not" cards. The game seems to drag on a bit more with the cards than without. We don't use them anymore at our house, we just count the number of shirts you've won until you've gathered 4 to 7, depending on how many players there are.

I used to be addicted to Apples to Apples for party games - now it sits in the corner gathering dust while we play the T-Shirt Game.