Review (Card Game) - Scrabble Slam!

Today, three packs of card games showed up on our desk. We were told Hasbro sent them to us? So my co-workers and I decided to do a little "research" on these games.

Scrabble Slam!: This game puts an innovative new twist on the classic board game, Scrabble. The game is for 2-4 players (recommended ages 8 and up), and should only take around 15 minutes to play. The game begins with four cards (spelling a word) laid on the table. The remaining cards are dealt to the players. The object of the game is to SLAM down your cards (cards have a different letter on each side) to change the word on the table one letter at a time (i.e. FROM to FROG, FROG to FLOG, etc.). Words may be changed back to the words they were just changed from (i.e. FROM to FROG, FROG to FLOG, FLOG to FROG), but a letter cannot be played on its twin (i.e. after FROM is changed to FROG, another person cannot play another G on top of the G already played). There are some blank cards in the deck, just like the blank tiles in the original Scrabble. The first player to use all of his/her cards wins!

Pros: Much shorter and easier than the original Scrabble; Less clean-up required; Easy to travel with; Everyone plays at the same time, so there is less chance of players getting bored. 

Cons: I can see it being easy (if vocabulary levels vary), for the same person (the one with the biggest vocabulary) to always win the game.

If you use this game at a library program, you may want to bring in a dictionary to check some of the words. Overall, I can see this being fun for tweens, teens, or adults at a library game day, or maybe just for your personal collection; I know I will certainly be asking Santa for Scrabble Slam! this year.

You can find this game at Amazon here.

My Rating: