I LOVE party games, especially ones that rely on phones and tablets so you don’t have to dick around with a load of barely-charged controllers. The fact that What the Dub?! Supports from 3-12 players means it's perfect for nights when a load of folks are over and they’ve been drinking brown liquid with a percentage on the side – although I also got my parents involved on a Monday afternoon over tea and biscuits, fun for ALL the family!
What the Dub?! Is a beautifully simple game, get your players together – you need at least 3 due to how the voting works, the game is unplayable with fewer players – log on to the website and off you go.
The game works in rounds of five (although you can change this from 3-10) and each round works by playing a short clip with some audio missing, each player then types in the missing audio on their phone/tablet/laptop and is played back in a random order, leaving the players to vote on their favourite. It’s a really simple premise that is presented with a surprising amount of style.
The game is framed as if in an old-style theatre with the intertitles between rounds in the form of old movie intro reels, these are really well implemented and dovetail perfectly with the voice of the announcer, giving the game a sheen of quality that makes it seem a far richer experience beyond the quite basic gameplay loop – really nicely done.
The ‘talkback’ in the game is done by a text-to-speech system, which adds to the humour of the scenes, scenes that vary from old Sherlock Holmes serials through infomercials, horror/sci-fi movies and beyond. All of which are ripe for a well-placed line of sharp dialogue…or a massive non-sequitur. Good.
You can also add sounds to your response as well as changing in-game options to mute bad language or extend the available time so that you can really treat yourself in crafting the perfect response, such as:
*Bridge of a spaceship on a cheap, 1960’s movie set*
“I think there’s something wrong with the captain…yesterday I went to his quarters and he was listening to Bon Jovi”
Comedy gold.
A friend pointed out that it perhaps would have been cool to have the ability to record your own voice and put on accents etc. as an extra option in tandem with the text-to-speech system but this would take the sting out of hearing the lines for the first time in the context of the video clip.
It would also rely on everyone else being silent as you recorded, quite frankly taking the instancy out of the amusement.
I do like how you can turn subtitles off so that the punchline of your writing isn’t ruined until it’s delivered on-screen, a nice touch!
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