A new game created by stand-up comic Jeff Foxworthy is meant to bring people together through laughs and hilarity.
The new game, called Relative Insanity® See What I Mean?!, made its debut at Toy Fair 2020 in New York City. The game is a continuation of the first game Foxworthy created in 2018, Relative Insanity.
“We had a Thanksgiving where the kids were playing Cards Against Humanity,” Foxworthy recalled. “I told them, ‘Your grandmother is here, your aunts and uncles are here, you have to pack that up and go in the basement.’ I sat there at the kitchen table and thought, ‘there has to be a way to do this where it’s not dirty like this.’ You could have implied things without saying it so everyone could play.”
With that in mind, Foxworthy sat down and started to think about what everyone had in common and came to this conclusion: “They all have a family and they’re all crazy.” said Foxworthy. What he created that day was the shell for what eventually became Relative Insanity.
“I wrote out 600 punchlines and 100 prompts on notecards and gave it to my family to try out,” said Foxworthy. “And they were laughing.”
Following the success of Relative Insanity, Foxworthy wanted to find new ways to add more laughs into the game. For See What I Mean?!, that meant adding in a visual component to the game.
“I thought, ‘Let’s add the visual element since memes are a funny thing now,'” said Foxworthy. “Everything is memes and captions. I had played the meme game (What Do You Meme?) with my kids and thought, ‘Can I incorporate memes and keep it in the family with Relative Insanity?'”
And thus, See What I Mean?! was born.
Game play for See What I Mean?! is simple: Each player draws seven answer cards. After pulling from the pile of photo cards, the judge rolls the die to determine which type of answer the players will provide — a Punchline, What Happened Next, or What Would Granny Say? Then the judge picks the funniest answer (Mom’s Favorite, worth 2 points), a second funniest (Middle Child, worth 1 point), and, if applicable, the worst answer (the Black Sheep).
The visual element and the addition of different categories put a twist on Foxworthy’s original game. The photos, many of which Foxworthy admitted were from his own family photo albums, and the cards were brought in to not only make the game more versatile, but to add in more laughs for the players.
“All the games had expansion packs to get more answers in,” said Foxworthy. “With See What I Mean?!, you get three different answers on each card, so there are 900 possible answers to go with each picture. I like that we did it this way with three categories, it was fun to approach writing the answers in that way of, ‘What would grandma say,’ or ‘what would I say in this situation.'”
When asked about the inclusion of adding the black sheep, Foxworthy said it too was for more laughs.
“In a game like this, there’s going to be cards that you’ll want to dump,” said Foxworthy. “You don’t let people get away with it. You give them a black sheep just to shame them a little bit.”
As a comic, Foxworthy knows how crucial laughter is for everyone. That’s why he wanted to create a game that was funny.
“I always felt like you bond with people the most when you laugh — that’s how you escape the struggles of life,” said Foxworthy. “That’s why I always thought that stand-up was important, it’s a relief valve that keeps you from going crazy. As a comic, you look for what people have in common — let’s find that common thread and mine the funny out of it. And those shared laughs are the glue that keeps people together.”
“The whole idea is to make people laugh,” Foxworthy added. “For me this isn’t just a celebrity putting their name on something — it’s what I do as a comic. This is just another form of comedy for me.”
Relative Insanity® See What I Mean?! is available on playmonster.com.
