I’m a total sucker for hybrid games. Take two ideas I enjoy and combine them together and more often than not, you have a third idea I’m also fairly keen on. So it is with All Talk, a game that fuses the collaborate clue-guessing of old game shows like $10,000 Pyramid with games that had a limited number of allowable guesses à la Family Feud.
All Talk is the sort of leisurely word game that doesn’t exactly evoke competition as much as it suggests a fine way to waste some time. Because the game is collaborative, where your “opponent” records vocal clues and you have to guess the word they’re trying to talk about without saying it, no one can really win. You can lose – when you guess three letters incorrectly you’re not allowed to try and figure out what the word is – but there’s not a true penalty for the misstep. You just move on to the next word.
That lack of actual competition won’t be a hindrance to some. It’s basically Draw Something with speaking instead of drawing, which is nice for those of us who can’t stand to draw anything at all. There are plenty of free words to guess too, so you can play with a friend (or a total stranger, who you’ll begin to grow a weird kinship towards) for quite a while. And users who don’t mind putting up a few bucks can also unlock bonus packs of words that are category-specific.
If you’re a verbal person and you’re looking to kill some time, All Talk is worth checking out. Whether you think of it as Draw Something for talkers or $10,000 Pyramid without the real money or cool pyramid set, it’s a fun experience just the same.
