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Cards Against Humanity is the best game.

Okay, let me back up here.

Apples to Apples is a card game many people like for these reasons: 1) It’s really simple to learn. 2) It feels creative, even though, most of the time there is no creativity involved. (There can be if you play the game the right way, which is to argue for your card with fucked-up logic, but many players do not do this.) 3) It’s competitive, but not directly competitive. In other words, you aren’t actively working to make another player lose, but you still get the satisfaction of winning if you win.

1 and 3 are valid reasons for liking the game. (And Cards Against Humanity has both of them.) However, once you really dig into playing Apples to Apples, 2 just kind of falls apart very quickly. The “funny” cards aren’t really that funny. Matching them with adjectives does not set up situations for laughter, really. Usually something is just wrong, flat out, or right. There are times where you can push the boundaries of what a word means, and it is those times when Apples to Apples is actually fun, but they are honestly few and far between. There is a guise of humor, but in the end, after a game or two, no humor really exists in the game. It’s kind of a soulless endeavor.

Cards Against Humanity, on the other hand, while playing basically the same as Apples to Apples, has a soul, and that soul is as crude as it is hilarious. The questions and memes the black cards put forth are, in many ways, entertaining in their own right. They’re often absurd on their face, and even when they are more standard, they’re designed to be pretty funny, no matter what card you play with them. Similarly, the white cards are written for comedic effect. There are “straight man” cards that are funny in certain situations, but also help to highlight how insane the more insane cards are. Little touches, like having the card say “Bees?” instead of “Bees” just show that this is a game made by people who get it. It’s a game where drawing random cards off the deck creates, most of the time, a logical and hilarious response. You will laugh while playing this game, unless you’re easily offended. It’s fantastic.

We played multiple rounds, and they were such a blast. We played using a suggested house rule, where there was a pretend extra player named “Rando Cardissian” who would just draw random cards off the top of the deck and play them. It was pretty amazing that, a lot of the time, it was hard to guess which card belonged to Rando! Similarly, it was great to really be able to play to the strategy of playing the cards that you think the current Card Czar would vote for. That’s sort of a thing in Apples to Apples, but there’s just not enough variety to do so. In Cards Against Humanity, it was pretty easy to pick “Harry Potter Erotica” for what kept Shauna up at night, or “Tasteful sideboob” for anything Spaeth was reading, and be rewarded for it. We laughed so damn hard, and I can’t wait to play it again. Sure, the game probably has a shelf life. Eventually you will have seen all the cards one too many times. But until then, fuck, this is an amazing party game.

It’s sold out right now, but BUY IT WHEN IT COMES BACK. Seriously. Do it. You will not regret it.