LOL: Never Party Alone

Rating Everyone Genre puzzle Publisher agetec External Links Oficial agetec Website

The tagline for LOL is: "If the game is boring, you are boring!" I bet every developer would like to put the responsibility for making their games fun on the shoulders of the player. In this case, the tagline rigns true. The developers have provided a wireframe of a game that players fill in with their own ideas and personalities. If you have a few friends that each has their own Nintendo DS, your chances of laughing out loud are pretty good. This is a party game similar to board game favorites like Pictionary. Only one cartridge is required, and up to four players can get in on the game. Whoever is hosting will start things off by offering a challenge to the other players. The challenge will be ANYTHING that the host can think of. They could ask a trivia question; ask players to draw an animal, ask them to fill in the blanks, whatever. Anything you can think of and draw with the stylus is possible.

Once you've offered your challenge you can set a time limit for the others to answer. Then, everyone is off to come up with a rebuttal. Again, players have carte blanche when answering. You can provide what the host is looking for -- or not. Maybe something completely unrelated would get everyone's attention. When everyone has answered, everyone votes for the answers they like the most. Each player has three votes to distribute. The player who receives the most votes wins the round. Of course, like the Oscars, it's common for people to vote for themselves, and rounds can end in a tie.

This sums up the experience of LOL. After the first round, the host chooses a player to come up with a question for the next round and you do the whole thing again. What LOL offers is very simple, but it has the potential to be very entertaining. It's a great way to pass the time in an airport, for instance, if you're traveling with friends and you each have a DS. There's nothing here that can't be done with pen and paper, but it does make good use of the DS's capabilities. It's a difficult game to describe, and probably even harder to advertise. That has caused normal retail outlets to pass on LOL, so Agetec is only offering it online from its #official website. It's $20, which may be a little much for what's on offer. I would rather have seen a $15 price tag, though its limited availability may make it a collector's item someday.