[Ad – Gifted Products] When it comes to board games, we play a lot of younger audience games every other Monday, at our local Geek Retreat. BUT, Dann and I also host dinner parties every other Tuesday, inviting a bunch of our friends over in the evening to play a game and enjoy some time together. This week, we played The Weakest Link board game, which is a trivia-style game based on the TV-show of the same name. This game felt like it fitted better to an older audience, ideal for teens and adults alike, as the trivia itself wasn’t designed with Robin’s age in mind.
We have played quite a few different trivia-style games with this dinner party group over the years and often find that the actual content of the trivia makes or breaks these types of games. We found that The Weakest Link had not only a great variety of trivia, but tons of recent trivia with questions that were about things happening in 2024! Most of the questions sort of said a category at the start, then a question, with some questions being very strangely phrased as the questions themself was extremely easy or some that had two choices giving people a 50/50 shot at getting it right. The variety was really just fantastic.
I have not seen The Weakest Link tv show, but those that did said the game had some fantastic nods! Everyone is given a mini-podium that they can write their name on the front of. Behind it, is a little pillar that you can put tokens on, when you get a question correct or incorrect or bank, to keep track of what you’ve done that round. These are important at the end of the round as well. Once everyone has set up their podiums, we determined who would be the questions person, and started the game. There is a few different boards that get placed down – a big, over-arching board that holds the tokens, which shows the score so far this game. There is also a smaller board for the round, that has money amounts. Inside the bigger board, there is a timer button that not only lights up, but also makes sounds similar to the show.
The questions reader, who everyone kept calling Ana (the host of the show), starts the round by hitting the bottom then reading the first question out to the first person, quickly moving to the next person and reading the next question when the first is answered. If a question is correct, the host needs to move a token up the money board, if it’s incorrect it resets to zero. If the money is banked, the token on the counter goes to the left side and a new token is used on the counting side. This may sound confusing, but it’s really not. The players answering questions are in charge of grabbing a token if they get the question right or wrong, or bank, adding them to their podium on the side nobody can see.
The Weakest Link has a timer that does flash and stop making noise when it’s done. At that point, everyone gets to vote on who they think the weakest link is, writing them on their podium top and revealing them with a satisfying push of a button, that also reveals how well they did that round. Whoever is voted the weakest link, even if they aren’t the weakest, is given a loser token. This is important at the end of the game when there is no more weak tokens, as the two players with the least amount go head-to-head for the money that everyone has earned, which is scored at the end of each round.
We had a fantastic time with The Weakest Link – the trivia questions were very good, the little gimmicks like the show were silly and felt like a lot of fun, and our group just does well with trivia games like this. Though it’s not a game I think Robin or Amelia would enjoy very much, I do think that adults and teens would have a fantastic time with this one.