Anomia is a hilarious, fast paced card game that will entertain people of all ages.
Anomia consists of players taking turns drawing cards from a deck that sits in the middle of the playing area and placing those cards face up in front of themselves. Each card has a category on it, such as “Pie Flavor” or “Mythological Creature.” They also have symbols on them, like a brown asterix or two purple lines. When two players have cards in front of them that have the same symbol on them, it becomes a “Face Off.” This means that, going with the example from before, the player who has the "Mythological Creature" card would have to say a pie flavor like “chocolate cream” before the other person, who has the "Pie Flavor" card, can say “Pegasus” or “Minotaur.” Whoever wins the face off gets the other person’s card to put in a pile of their own off to the side and when the deck is depleted the person with the most cards wins the game.
However easy this may seem, it is most definitely not. I guarantee that the moment you get into a Face Off, the most basic knowledge will magically disappear from your brain. This makes for some funny situations ranging from two people screaming gibberish at each other in the hopes that something to do with the category will come out, to a perfectly capable adult yelling “Job!” when asked to name an occupation. Although it’s fun no matter what, I especially recommend playing with the same people multiple times because it can often lead to some great inside jokes. For example, I have a friend who called it the gnome game once and now that’s what everyone in my family calls it.
Another particularly amusing anomaly of Anomia is that, the vast majority of the time, kids will beat adults. Whether that is because kids are quicker or have better memories, it makes for a significant ruffling of many parents' competitive sides.
There are also wild cards in the deck to mix things up and a few extra decks that you can buy in a party pack if you get bored of the two in the regular version. Overall, I highly recommend this game, but warning, do not play it in a library!