
One of my favorite girls’ night traditions is playing cards and board games. So when I saw a blurb for Rotten Apples, I was immediately intrigued: It looked like a combination of “Apples to Apples” and “Cards Against Humanity”, two of my favorites to play with my BFF, so I thought this would be a really fun one to try out!
Rotten Apples has the same kind of gameplay as the other games in this genre: One person serves as “Apple Picker” and selects a card from the “Prompt card” pile. The players then choose from one of the 10 “Answer cards” in their hand which they think gives the best/funniest answer to the question, and the Apple Picker selects their favorite, who snags the answer card as proof that they won the round. The winner becomes the new Apple Picker, and the game continues until one person wins three cards.

I received this card right before throwing a Halloween-themed bachelorette party, and since this is “The tasteless adult party game”, I thought it would be pretty fitting! All the guests thought it looked like a blast, but we all spent so much time chit-chatting and enjoying the buffet that we got too tired and had to call it a night before we had a chance to try it out.
So, the following weekend I asked Jai if he would play a round with me. One of the things that really appealed to me about this game is that the box says it can be played with between 2 and 10 players. Jai loves video games but loathes board games – go figure – but he humored me and agreed to play a round so I could test it out. š

One of the issues that my bestie and I run into is that we’re usually the only ones who want to play, so I thought a 2-player game would be perfect for our game nights! However, I don’t think Rotten Apples works very well with two people, because the Apple Picker has to vote for either their own card or their opponent’s. Neither Jai or I are competitive, so it worked OK for us because we did just vote for the card we thought was the most genuinely funny – for example, the photo above is one of Jai’s selections that I voted for over mine because it was funnier than my cards! However, this wouldn’t work for everybody, and I definitely think it would be way more fun with more players.
As for the gameplay itself, my initial impression that it was somewhere between “Cards Against Humanity” and “Apples to Apples” was dead on. The cards are most certainly very risque, but not as extreme as Cards Against Humanity. It’s also not as clever, but it’s still definitely fun! If you’re a fan of these type of games, I think it’s absolutely worth adding to your collection, because you’ll get a lot of fun out of it! Because the game comes complete with 455 answer cards and each one of the 65 prompt card is double-sided, you have a lot of options to play with before it would become stale.
Rotten Apples is sold exclusively at Toys ‘R Us for $22.99 – learn more at PlayRottenApples.com!