Room Escape Artist

Taskmaster Christmas Crackers is a holiday party game themed on the show Taskmaster. It was produced in conjunction with Puzzle Post.

Format

Style of Play:

• Party game

Who is it For?

• Any experience level
• Taskmaster fans

Required Equipment: Some household items may be used for tasks. You’ll also want mobile device (or computer) to find out about the final task, which is presented as a video. We suggest a pen and paper for keeping score.

Recommended Team Size: 4-6

Play Time: No game clock, but expect to spend the evening playing off and on, with dinner in the middle. The game provides 3 variations on game length based on what types of tasks get played.

Price: $33 (USD) plus shipping from the UK

Booking: purchase and play at your leisure

Description

Before dinner, everyone pops their cracker. Inside they have a secret task (which they read to themselves), a dinner table task, and an after-dinner task. Each cracker also contains a few other things.

Secret task: Throughout the course of the game, players try to complete their secret task without anyone else figuring out what that secret task is.

Dinner table task: Each player gets a turn as Taskmaster, reading out their task, judging the results, and awarding points as they see fit.

After-dinner task: Players take turns as Taskmaster, with the other players breaking up into teams to do more complex tasks.

After the tasks are complete, there is a single Final Task, presented as a video from Alex Horne, that all players compete to do the best at.

There are 6 bonus task videos available if players want to have additional challenges.

When all tasks are complete, the scores are tallied, and a grand winner is crowned.

Brett Kuehner’s Reaction

• + Everyone gets a turn as Taskmaster, and THE TASKMASTER’S WORD IS FINAL (at least for their task)
• – One cracker was missing a secret task and had a duplicate table task, which was a disappointing mistake
• + Good task variety – some physical, some mental, some creative
• + Dinner-table tasks felt like they could have been actual final tasks from the show, with all the contestants doing the tasks on stage together
• + Wisely, the more elaborate tasks, requiring planning time and props, were after-dinner tasks and could be team tasks
• – Trivia questions were hard for fans and impossible for people who have only watched a few episodes
• – Game would have benefitted from including a scoring sheet (though it would be a little tricky to make one without revealing information about some tasks)
• + Bonus task assignment videos from Alex were quick and fun
• ? Would be less fun for people who haven’t watched the show

Tip: Some tasks benefit greatly from having a teammate who lives in the place where the game is being played, so split teams up appropriately

Andrew Reynolds’ Reaction

Taskmaster Christmas Crackers were a great accompaniment to an already great evening with friends. They added fun games for all stages of the night – before eating, during dinner, and after. My biggest complaint was about the secret tasks; my cracker erroneously did not include one and so I was unable to participate in that task. And part of the game asked everyone to figure out and expose the other players’ tasks. I felt like the game could have provided a few example secret tasks to give us some parameters to work within. But everything else was very enjoyable: the tasks were representative of the show, there were hidden surprises, and fans (and superfans) of the show were rewarded with trivia and Easter eggs. You don’t have to know the ins and outs of Taskmaster to enjoy these crackers, but you should be prepared to play in the spirit of the game: take some creative risks, have fun, and don’t take it too seriously.

David Spira’s Reaction

Taskmaster Christmas Crackers was in the spirit of the TV series, it was an amusing and goofy way to spend an evening with our friends.

From a gameplay standpoint, it was, let’s say, inconsistent:

Some of our crackers didn’t have everything in them… which felt like a bigger issue at the outset of the game than it did at the end. We weren’t hurting for content.

And while some tasks were a ton of fun and felt properly evocative of the show, others were a touch dull, and a few felt too challenging or impractical to do as a guest in someone else’s home.

Overall, I have a feeling that the success of this game is going to come down to the group that you play with. If everyone is bringing a similar level of commitment (whether it’s high or low), I think that you’ll have a good time with this game. If there is an imbalance in the expectations that the players have for one another, this game will get messy real quick.

Choose your gaming friends wisely (this goes for all games really, if your friends suck, consider getting better friends).