Person Do Thing – No Bad Thing!

Sometimes you watch a few people playing a game and your curiosity is so piqued as to what on earth they’re doing that you have to observe. Other times you see something that looks basic, but the reactions of the players tell you that something more complex is happening in the “meta” of the game. Enter Person Do Thing, a word-guessing game by Uri Bram that takes “overwhelmingly simple” to an extreme, making it absolutely hilarious.

Person Do Thing is a two-to-whatever player game published by Marbiru LLC. It’s available for sale in the US by Runaway Parade. Person Do Thing supports players age 8 and up and plays in 15+ minutes.

Gameplay

Person Do Thing is a fully cooperative clue-giving game where one player (the “Say-Person”) gives clues to everyone else to get them to guess their word within two minutes. The twist is the heavily limited list of words the Say-Person is allowed to use.

When starting off in Person Do Thing, we (and the game) recommend using the “Thing” and “More-Thing” decks. You can think of these as difficulty levels: “Thing” is easy and “More-Thing” is medium difficulty. The first two difficulty levels give the Say-Person some support for their Thing by recommending specific words from the Say-Thing Board that could relate well to the Thing.

Once players are ready, start using the “Many-Thing” cards. These cards only have three Things on them, and it’s up to the Say-Person to pick one and have awareness of the available clue words they can use. All three of these decks have different backs, making them very easy to distinguish from each other.

But How Do You Win?

Person Do Thing is intended to be a casual game – scoring is secondary. If it’s something you want to track, the game recommends playing seven turns and keeping score of the Things your group has correctly guessed. When we played we would go around the table a set number of times in a smaller group, or just let everyone be the Say-Person once in a larger group.

If you really want to play against other people, just split the group into teams and play an equal number of turns for each team, switching the Say-Person every time. You can all commit to using the same difficulty, or have the different difficulties worth 1, 2, or 3 points and let the Say-Person pick the difficulty they want.

Impressions

Person Do Thing hardly reinvents the wheel in the clue-giving genre. One could even be forgiven for mistaking Person Do Thing for another popular game, Poetry for Neanderthals. There are a few differences to draw out, though, that might help you choose the right game for you.

Clever and Calm

First, Person Do Thing is actually more restrictive. There are only 34 words Say-Persons can use in Person Do Thing, and technically some are multi-syllabic. This makes the thoughts and ideas feel more complex, instead of just trying to communicate with guttural phrases:

Q: Person and Person. Same But No Same!
A: Twins!

The second difference, and perhaps the more subtle but important one for us, is the mood the game is going for. Poetry For Neanderthals comes from the Exploding Kittens family, so it’s not surprising the game leans into sophomoric humor. You resolve errors by beating each other with an inflatable club.

On the contrary, even the color palette of Person Do Thing (pink backgrounds with off-white text) imply softness and warmth. This is a game about fun and collaboration; a notably different mood from cavemen with rudimentary communication techniques.

This isn’t to say one game is better than the other, but I couldn’t see myself owning one, while I’m thankful I’ve gotten the chance to review the other, and I look forward to keeping Person Do Thing in my collection.

You can add it to your collection, too, by getting it directly from Runaway Parade, on Amazon, or at your friendly local game store. Or, you can try it out at PersonDoThing.com.

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Runaway Parade provided The Family Gamers with a promotional copy of Person Do Thing for this review.

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