True story, I was deep in the dredges of Facebook one day and a friend of a friend invited yet a third friend to come to an event where they we’re going to play a game called Two Rooms and a Boom. I’m a sucker for new games and I started doing tons of research on it, even though I wasn’t invited to the party. I was quickly enamored by watching a Youtube video of other people play the game.
Here’s the basic concept: a group of people split into two rooms and after every round a few people switch rooms. Everyone in the game has drawn a card to assign them a secret role. Two of the roles are The President and The Bomber. The goal is to end the game with The President and The Bomber in the same room or in different rooms depending on your alliance. I pitched it for a Summer Festival Camp breakout activity without actually ever playing it and a few days later we gathered a small crew of young adults to come “test” it out at my co-worker’s house.
What I and my merry band of misfits shortly discovered was a interesting game of secret roles, strategy and social engineering. To learn more about the game and game play, visit the creator’s of the game’s (Tuesday Knight Games) website.
In the Youth Ministry context, this a great “game night” game for you to play with 8-30 people. The game play is pretty simple, but really takes 1 or 2 rounds to get into so you will want to block out at least an hour or two to play. My guess is it would fit really great at a Christmas Party, single church lock-in or a Friday night fun night.
It has a similar feel to Mafia in the secret roles part, however unlike in Mafia, nobody gets eliminated and a full games only lasts 20 minutes total, so it keeps participants involved and interested. Plus, there are endless amounts of secret role cards to change in that shift game play to keep things spicy.
You can buy either a pre-printed set or you can print your own from the Tuesday Knight Games website.
I’ve come to love the game and it’s a very quirky way to have some good clean fun with teenagers.