Family Game Night: Snake Oil Review

We love to do Family Game Nights at our house – and we’ve played a LOT of different games over the years. With all of the games we’ve played, though, Snake Oil is one of our FAMILY FAVORITES!! In fact, we love it so much that we bought both editions of the game so we’d have more cards to play with, and as soon as the third set is available we’ll be getting them too! (=

Riley got this game from a friend who said it was her family’s favorite game, and I can see why! Every time we play this game we end up laughing so hard that we literally have tears running down our face!! In fact, we laugh so hard that I think we can call it our ab workout for the day. (=

This game could be fun for all ages, but I would recommend you be old enough to read the words on the cards in order to play – if not, you would just need someone to help you with that. We started playing when Cabot was 7 and he had no problem picking it up. I also think the larger the group you have the funnier it is. The more people have to compete to sell their product against competitors the more outlandish they get.  We usually play with 4 people (which is quite funny!) but the couple times we’ve played with 8-10 people it was uncontrollable laughter the whole time.

Here’s a quick overview of Basic Game Play:

All players take 6 Word Cards to create their “product” from (they draw 2 new cards to replace those they used after every turn). The first player draws a Customer Card and the other players each use 2 of the cards in their hand to create a product to sell to that customer. Each player gives a pitch about their product and why the Customer should choose theirs – sometimes the products are amazingly clever, and sometimes they are downright ridiculous – but either way they’re usually funny! The person who has sold the most products at the end of the game wins.

Here is what Riley (age 12) has to say about Snake Oil:  Snake Oil is a fun game for people of all ages. I really enjoyed Snake Oil because of how creative it forces you to be and how you have to think of ways to sell things that there is no way you would ever buy and to a person that you would not think of targeting when selling them something. I recommend this game for any family game night, I would definitely play it at a party.

Here is what Cabot (age 8) has to say about Snake Oil: Snake Oil is a game that you try to sell your product to the customer and there is customer cards which have two different kinds of characters like zombie, caveman,  grandma, princess and a whole lot more so you can have a choice and then you’re wondering how do I come up with a product to sell so that’s why there is another couple sets of cards that you get six of and you can use two per round and you use those to make what you’re going to sell and then you try to sell your product to the customer but the customer can only give the card to one person so this is how they decide so let’s say I’m a Superhero (which is a card) and someone uses Rescue Trophy (which again are really two real cards) and I might say bingo this is something I would like to use as a Superhero but then again some Superheroes might wonder why  you would think of this thing it’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard of it’s so stupid (but never say that out loud to the person and if you think of it which try not to don’t tell anybody else.) That is why I think everybody 4+ as long as they can read would like this game (and the reason I put 4+ was because 3- might rip the cards.)

The downside is that it’s hard to find Snake Oil in the stores (I’ve never seen it at Target), but you can get it from Amazon – and if you have Prime Shipping you can be playing in a couple of days. (=

Here’s a link to the Snake Oil games on Amazon in case you are interested in checking them out (and we HIGHLY RECOMMEND you do!) I would recommend you order BOTH sets, the regular game and the Party Potion pack – you will want as many cards as you can get to make playing even more hilarious. The bonus is, none of the cards are duplicated between the sets, so you will have a lot more to choose from with both sets. (=

Snake Oil Games on Amazon