On a Scale of One to T-Rex is a game, not entirely dissimilar to charades, where players perform actions like “Be a T-Rex” or “The Floor is Lava” to a specified intensity — which can produce some truly funny moments.
This game is made for between two to eight players and the box contains 139 cards: a mix of action cards and intensity cards. There are also 58 scoring tokens. The play area is easy to set up. You have a draw pile of number cards, three piles of the different-coloured action cards, scoring tokens appropriate to the number of players and the lid of the box to use as a discard pile.
At the start of the game, action cards are drawn from all three piles and placed on the table, then each player draws an intensity card. The game is then ready to start, somebody counts in and everybody is off.
Each player must perform the action on the action card that matches the colour of their intensity card at the level shown on the card from a scale of one to ten. It’s this intensity level which really makes On a Scale of One to T-Rex different from standard charades.
Players can then score points by matching up intensity levels shown on their cards with that of another player. If the player thinks they are performing their action (which can be a different action) at the same energy level as another then they present their card face down to that player if that player agrees you both reveal your cards. You score based on how close you are to each other — an exact match is two points; one on either side is one point, and if they aren’t close to each other then both players actually lose a point.
If people don’t feel that people are delivering similar energy to them then players can discard their intensity card. In addition to this, if a swap card is drawn then that player can swap the action for the corresponding colour.
The game ends when either the negative of positive points tokens have been depleted.
Overall, I did not enjoy this game and there are a few issues that we had with the game. We felt that there were not enough swap cards in the deck (only seven). This means that you could all be stuck doing the same actions for the entire game. The game also needs to be played with like-minded people who share the same enthusiasm for the game — we had few situations where we thought some players were performing a low number but they felt they were performing to a seven or eight intensity.
To make the game flow more we had to play with our own modified rules which allowed us to swap the actions more frequently. We made it so that if there was an exact match then players could change any single action card, and if there was a near match then an action card appropriate to the colours dealt could be changed. This changed the pace of the game, and — for us at least — made the game more enjoyable.
On a Scale of One to T-Rex is available now on Amazon.