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Pretending to Grownup: The Game We All Pretend to Play in Real Life

Pretending to Grownup: The Game We All Pretend to Play in Real Life

I’ll be honest. Being a grownup can be a lot of fun. You can stay up as late as you want. You can eat an ice cream sandwich at 3 AM if you feel like it. You can even binge watch your favorite shows over a weekend of ignoring chores. Granted these may not be the most responsible things you can do as a grownup, but I mean I played this game for the 1st time at 1 AM with a cup of coffee and some mochi ice cream. So being a grownup definitely has its benefits.

Pretending to Grownup’s artwork and card designs mock our mundane responsibilities that kill our free time and point out our carefree activities that distract us from our actual responsibilities with its cute art and funny card descriptions. Each card (except the fabled half unicorn, half Pegasus, half dinosaur creature called the Unipegasaurus) has 3 resources; time, money, and energy. The holy trinity of adulthood rears its ugly head here and each card assigns a value to those individual categories. You then have to play cards that have higher numerical values than your opponents by declaring “I have more (time/money/energy)”, or you could also bluff your opponents into thinking you have the superior resource to get points too.

 

The Unipegasaurus cards, much like our imagination, bend the rules of the game and allow you to do some crazy effects like draw cards from your opponents’ hands or steal points from your opponents. The Unipegasaurus cards really add a fun layer of strategy that keeps games light and fun. Like any card game that’s dependent on drawing from a deck, some games just don’t go your way as you may get cards with rather low numbers while your opponent keeps getting the good ones. Unfortunately there’s no workaround that can fix bad luck in Pretending to Grownup and some games end up being pretty lopsided. For a fun card game that doesn’t take itself too seriously though, it’s not a big deal.

The worst thing about the game is the Daydream Token. This is the wooden token that comes with the game that adds +1 to your card scores (pictured above). This token can be taken at the beginning of the turn by anyone. If it gets taken for 2 consecutive turns it returns to the center of the table and no one gets to daydream. Since taking the Daydream Token counts as your action for the turn, there were several turns where we just took the token to prevent the previous player from having it. It didn’t really add much to the game unfortunately. 

Pretending to Grownup seems to be appealing to casual gamers though. Before we had to quarantine ourselves, I had several guests over to my house and an overwhelming amount of people wanted to play it. These were people whose lives don’t revolve around tabletop games like mine, so if you’re the type of gamer that likes to play casual games with friends and family that can be played over some great conversation and drinks then this is the game for you.

Pretending to Grownup is published by Golden Bell Studios. Take a look at some of  their other games, webcomics, and other fun projects they have going on. You can buy Pretending to Grownup on the official Golden Bell Studios website for $29.95. 

Bonus tip: We houseruled the Daydream Token to be taken by the last person to play a Unipegasaurus card. It made for some intense moments as we would rely on keeping the token to give our cards its +1 bonus only to have it snatched away by someone else later that turn.

About Me:  I am a video/tabletop game reviewer, content creator, and game member of the Drop the Spotlight Gaming Crew. If you have questions about any of my content, reach out to me at maurogarcia@dropthespotlight.com. You can also view our gaming content on our FacebookTwitter, & Instagram pages, check out our gaming podcast on Anchor FM, and our videos can be viewed on the Drop the Spotlight YouTube.