Welcome to my review of “Faces“—the party game that lets you judge books by their covers (and get away with it). If you’ve ever wanted to vote on which stranger looks most likely to steal your lunch, this game is for you. I’ve played it with friends, endured some wild accusations, and now I’m here to spill the beans on whether it’s worth your hard-earned cash. Let’s get those eyebrows wiggling and see if this game brings more laughs than groans.
How It Plays
Setting up
Shuffle the face cards and deal a bunch to everyone. Give each player a voting card. Place the rest in the middle. That’s about as hard as folding socks.
Gameplay
One player reads out a question card. Things like, “Who just ate a lemon?” Everyone secretly picks which face from the center matches best. Players vote and giggle while trying to guess the group’s favorite choice. It’s kind of like being a judge at a weird beauty contest.
Winning the game
Players score when they match the most popular vote (and yes, you’ll start overthinking every eyebrow). First to a set number of points wins. That’s it! Play until you run out of faces or run out of friends who will still talk to you afterward.
Want to know more? Read our extensive strategy guide for Faces.
How easy is it to learn Faces?
Alright, let’s get straight to it: Faces is almost laughably simple to learn. I’m the kind of person who zones out during long rule explanations, so when I cracked open Faces and saw the instructions, I breathed a big sigh of relief. The rules are so easy, even my friend who once confused a dice with a timer picked it up right away (true story, and we still tease him for it).
Here’s the lowdown. You’ve got a bunch of cards with people’s faces on them, and one player reads a question from a stack—something silly like, “Who’s most likely to secretly be a superhero?” The rest of us try to pick a face card from our hands that matches the question. Then everyone guesses whose card is whose. Easy-peasy. It’s mostly about reading your friends and finding the funniest or weirdest face for the prompt.
You won’t get bogged down in weird mechanics or surprise rules. In fact, the hardest part is resisting the urge to giggle through the round. When I played with my friends, we read the rules aloud and got started in under five minutes. The only time we checked the rulebook again was to settle a heated debate about whether one face looked more like someone’s ex or their old math teacher. (The answer: both, somehow.)
If you want a game you can teach your grandma and your neighbor at the same time, Faces has you covered. Stay tuned, because next I’m sharing why this game can turn a normal group of people into a laugh riot in seconds!
Group Fun and Party Energy: How Does Faces Do?
Alright, so here’s a little secret from my gaming crew: when we bring out Faces, we know things are about to get silly. This game is basically tailor-made for groups, especially if you enjoy a bit of improv and laughter mixed with your competition.
The premise is simple but gold. One player draws a card with a question, like “Who secretly wishes they were famous?” and then everyone looks at a set of odd, wild, or downright goofy faces. The rest of us then vote on which face matches the prompt and, let me tell you, you get everything from inside jokes to absurd debates. My friend Lisa always picks the one that looks the most shocked, while Steve insists on finding deep, emotional meaning in a cartoonish grin. Both strategies, I assure you, are equally useless.
Faces works best with larger groups, where the noise level goes from zero to ‘are the neighbors complaining?’ in about five minutes. The real fun comes from the banter—hearing why someone thinks grandpa with the monocle is obviously the “next TikTok star” is way more entertaining than just scoring points.
If your group is shy or not great with quick decisions, it might take a round or two before everyone loosens up. But that’s just part of the charm. Next, let’s see if sheer luck will make or break the winner in Faces… stay tuned for tales of eyebrow-raising chance!
How Much Does Luck Affect Winning in Faces?
Let’s get one thing clear: Faces is not a game for those who hope to win on pure skill. If you’re someone who hates when luck gets all the glory and skill takes a back seat, you might want to brace yourself. I learned this the hard way after I confidently picked what I thought was the perfect match of face and clue, only for my friends to pick literally every other face but mine. (Thanks, Greg. I’ll remember that at your birthday party.)
In Faces, luck shows up wearing glitter and a fake mustache. Here’s why: the game challenges you to match hilarious, weird, or sometimes utterly unmatchable clues to faces from a pile of random photos. You vote on which face matches the clue, but nothing guarantees your group sees the same frown, smirk, or wild hair that you do. Sometimes everyone’s on the same page and you all laugh in agreement. Most of the time, you’re just hoping that your cousin sees that one face as ‘most likely to order pineapple pizza’ and not ‘most likely to win a hot dog contest’.
Because so much depends on how unpredictable your friends are feeling, the outcome depends more on group whim than on any strategic genius. As a lover of games where thinking actually has a shot, I find this a bit of a letdown. Faces is fantastic for laughs, but if you crave balanced competition, expect some eyebrow-raising moments.
Now, let’s see if Faces offers enough replay value or if the fun dries up faster than my patience for Greg’s pineapple opinions!
Replay Value and Variety in Faces: The Fun That Keeps on Grinning
Let’s talk replay value and variety, because if you’re like me, you don’t want a game to feel stale after one round. Faces has more legs than a centipede in a sock factory when it comes to replayability. The main reason? The people you play with change up the experience every single time.
Each round in Faces, you pick out a card with a unique face and match it to a scenario or emotion. Then you laugh (or groan) at your friends’ wild guesses. There are piles of face cards and prompt cards, so combinations keep things fresh. I’ve played with my family, my friends, and even a couple of folks I barely know—every group played it different. Some go for silly, others for clever, and one of my friends just likes to pick the weirdest-looking eyebrow. No round felt the same, which I loved.
But we’re here for honesty, right? After about ten rounds in a row, we did start to feel a bit of déjà vu with some of the faces. The artwork is fun, but you will start to recognize your favorites (shoutout to Squinty Steve!). Luckily, mixing up the group or even adding some of your own ridiculous prompts (house rule it!) can crank the variety back up.
So, do I recommend Faces? Absolutely, if you want a party game with laughs and loads of replay value, and you don’t mind spotting Uncle Larry’s confused frown card more than once. It stays fun for a long while, especially with new players jumping in!
Conclusion
So, that’s my full take on Faces! I laughed harder than I probably should have, but mostly thanks to my friends’ oddball comments and the goofy faces on those cards. The game is super easy to pick up, which made it a hit with everyone—even Aunt Marge, who thinks TikTok is a kind of clock. It shines best in a crowd and doesn’t need you to be a games master, but if you want deep strategy or don’t like games where luck and opinion rule, you might not love it as much. Faces is great for silly, social nights, just don’t expect to plan your way to victory. That wraps up my review—hope it helps you figure out if Faces will put a smile on your table!
