What On Earth Are You Talking About? Is an Out-of-This-World Party Game

Escape Tabletop Games

Party card games like Apples to Apples and its evil twin, Cards Against Humanity, are a great way to spend hours laughing with friends, leaving your brains at the door. However, I’ve found I’m more fond of games that retain that extremely casual atmosphere, yet still demand some critical thinking. The recently released Puns of Anarchy is an excellent example for the dad joke lovers out there, while Channel A: The Anime Pitch Party Game remains my all-time favorite. In these sorts of games, the cards serve merely as the inspiration for creativity, while the humor itself comes from the players themselves. If I sound somewhat vague here, that’s okay! Because What On Earth Are You Talking About?, currently funding on Kickstarter, is a new card game of this ilk, designed by the team at Escape Tabletop Games.

What On Earth Are You Talking About? puts players in the role of space aliens and the humans they are trying to communicate with, despite a limited understanding of how our primitive human society works. The alien players are presented with Earth cards featuring human concepts which they must “aliensplain” to the human players, by forming backronyms from the Alien cards available to them to describe the Earth card. For example, if the Earth card reads “Fast Food,” and the Alien card contains the letters “J S C T A W _ L,” an acceptable description would be “Juicy Speedy Consumables Taste Amazing While Threatening Longevity,” with the underscores being letters of the player’s choice. The human players are abducted as pairs and compete with one another in trying to guess the Earth card the alien players are trying to describe, scoring points by doing so. Play proceeds around the table, with each player having ample opportunity to explore both the alien and human roles.

The full rules of this game can be found on the Kickstarter project’s campaign, where two expansions you can tack onto your pledge also receive brief coverage. The “Not Safe For Aliens” expansion introduces new cards that are NSFA (whatever that means), while the “VS” expansion contains Earth cards split between two concepts, with players forming teams to battle over these cards. I’ll admit: I would be more interested in both of these expansions if there were a little (or maybe a lot) more detail into what exactly they offer. Of course, there’s always the option of upping one’s pledge later should more information be forthcoming. For now, though, backers can try out the base game immediately by using a web app, found among the project’s updates. The stretch goals presented are modest but compelling, with the $12,500 level, which has already been reached, adding blank Earth cards to the game. These are common in party card games, offering a fun way to customize your copy of the game. Later additions include “Impossible Alien cards” that contain no underscores, making them all the more challenging to use, and cards submitted by backers. Nothing seems pie-in-the-sky or beyond the scope of what the game is trying to do, something I’ve become very careful to watch for when checking out Kickstarter campaigns.

At the time of this writing, What On Earth Are You Talking About? has surpassed its initial goal of $6,838. The campaign ends on Tuesday, February 28.