Play a Game You Like

Written By Cody Unger

Confession: I think Apples to Apples sucks.

Have you played it recently? The mechanics aren’t even good. Anyways, improv shouldn’t be like family game night, where we play only whatever game mom and the youngest sibling will tolerate. Let’s play a game we like.

Here are 3 traps we can fall into that lead to bad games.

  1. We think we MUST play the first unusual thing.

  2. We think we must say yes to things we don’t want to say yes to.

  3. We feel uncomfortable if the audience isn’t laughing.

Here’s a clip of my boys Nate and Harrison finding the game in one of my favorite improv shows I have recorded: BEEF. in a Planetarium. (Click the preceding link to open to the correct timestamp: 1:51-5:55)

You’ll notice a few things…

  1. The scene starts SLOW. (35 seconds of silence)

  2. It starts UNUSUAL. (“I love working nights. I’ve always been a night man.” “Me too. I hate working during the day. I gotta drink coffee… I just feel like I’m nocturnal”)

  3. The first unusual thing doesn’t get laughs, and they pass on it. They stay in agreement, signaling we haven’t found our game yet.

We don’t get our first chuckles until a minute in. It comes with a strong ‘yes, and’ from Harrison (“God, you’re right, the stars are cool.”) Those first chuckles are a sign we’re finding something fun, and Harrison steps on the gas a bit more (“Hey remember that time last month, it was a real clear night, we looked up and saw all kinds of stars we don’t barely ever get to see.”) Now we’re breaking into some real laughs.

Then we find our game, with our first moment of divergence:

Harrison: Sorry, can you just?—I’m thinking about it. (unusual thing + divergence)

Nate: You want me to be quiet about my excitement? (Framing, top of intelligence reaction)

Harrison: Well, because I’m thinking about how excited I was, dude. (Justification)

Nate: Sorry, I forgot you’re a very private exciting man. Like when you did get all excited that night, you ran into the janitor’s closet… (Labeling the game + example)

Boom. There’s a game, with a handshake, and Nate finishes it off with an example of how the unusual behavior manifests itself.

I love this scene. It’s not lightning in a bottle, and actually, that’s exactly what I love about it. It’s just a workaday improv scene. They come out, they play pretty real until they find something that we’re all chuckling about in the room, and they lock it in. It’s easy to play from there.

Great scene. Way more fun than Apples to Apples.

Cody Unger