How does challenging your friends to a drawing duel sound? Intrigued?! Now is the time for them to design you a tattoo in less than three minutes, which is thankfully drawn on a dry erase board and not your actual body. Depending on who your friends are, this game can result in some amazing, horrible, hilarious, or even inappropriate designs, but you won’t know until the drawing begins!
Tattoo Stories, a party game from Bicycle, is Pictionary meets tattoo art. This game can be played with four to six players and is simple enough to master in the first round of play. To start, everyone gets their own dry erase board and marker. The player to go first is referred to as the “customer” and draws 10 cards from the card box placed in the center. Then, they narrow down the selection to five cards, which will be combined to make up the vision for their tattoo design.
The tattoo elements listed on the cards range widely and include verbs, nouns, and phrases, such as “kissing,” “zombie,” “hula dancer,” “’90s themed,” and “patriotic.” There are endless word combinations possible, which means every round is different.
After the customer chooses their five words, it’s time for all other players, or “tattoo artists,” to combine the five elements into their own unique drawings. Make sure you have a phone or timer handy because the artists only get three minutes to draw their designs on the dry erase boards — no erasing allowed! While drawing, tattoo artists are encouraged to question the customer to get an idea of how they envision the design.
Once time is up, each tattoo artist pitches their own design to the customer. After everyone pitches their designs, the customer chooses a winner for each tattoo card. For example, if one card was “zombie,” the customer would choose which artist wins that particular card, and so forth. The five cards per round can be awarded to multiple artists or just one person, depending on how the customer viewed everyone’s designs.
The player to the left of the current customer is the customer for the next round, and play continues clockwise until the end of the game. The player awarded the most tattoo cards after every player has been the customer twice wins, which takes about 30 minutes to complete.
The game’s catchphrase is “good ink or bad ink … the art is how you sell it,” which definitely rings true for those players who need to try to sell a cringeworthy stick figure as your next tattoo design.
Tattoo Stories is $19.99 and available now at bicyclecards.com and amazon.
Photos: Bicycle
