All Bad Cards

Like Cards Against Humanity, this online game involves matching witty phrases and sentence portions with partial thoughts and questions. The interface in All Bad Cards is fairly easy to figure out -- players click on a "Pick" button to select a card and a Play button to submit it. The person judging the rounds reads each card that's submitted and clicks on one to choose a winner, then clicks on another button to initiate the next round. Players can set up games with one to 50 real-world or automated AI players, and they also have some leeway with the format. They can alter the number of required rounds, the card pack that's used, and other elements in the game settings.

As with Cards Against Humanity, All Bad Cards works best with several opponents. Whoever initiates the game will also judge the responses, so playing against one AI player means you'll just see one randomly generated card response in each round -- there isn't much of a challenge or decision involved. Players can also join or watch games that are in progress, although the timing seems to be tricky for that functionality, since they can enter a game and wait for the next round to start indefinitely. With multiple friends, though, this can be a pretty decent experience. The gameplay isn't too dynamic -- most of the action involves clicking on buttons -- but players can chat on-screen and are told who won each round. Parents may have valid concerns about kids seeing some of the responses -- a number were definitely intended for adults. But the developer gets kudos for offering a more kid-friendly version with less outrageous response cards. Some safety features are built into the family friendly game. Kids invite friends by sending a URL and approve them before they can play, and random people can't join or watch unless kids change the game settings to make their match public. If kids can avoid the temptation to let players submit written responses, which could open the door to less appropriate answers, or click over to the less restricted version of All Bad Cards, they might find exchanging silly responses a fun -- and funny -- way to connect with friends.