Bad Medicine

Party game
3-8 players
30 minutes

On Kickstarter now – Staff Pick!

You and your opponents are pharmaceutical companies, and you must come up with new drugs to treat an array of disorders in this hilarious new party game!

Every card has three things on it: a bit of a drug name (“PLEX”, “CEN”, and so on), a bit of advertising copy (“reduces swelling”, “now in chewable tablets”, and so on), and a side effect (“genital warts”, “teeth grow outside mouth”, “spontaneous combustion”, and so on).

At the start of the game, every player gets 7 cards, and then you’ll reveal the top card of the deck. Its side effect will be the malady to treat this turn. Everybody simultaneously chooses 3 cards to be their drug name and 2 cards for their drug’s ad copy.

Then in player order, everybody pitches their drug. Make an ad for it. Try to get us to buy your drug, or at least ask our doctors about it!

As a player is pitching, every one else will play one of their cards. All these cards are possible side effects. The pitching player will choose one of these cards as the drug’s side effect. The player who submitted the side effect gets a point.

Once everyone has pitched, everyone votes for their favorite drug (and no, you can’t vote for yourself). All players get 2 points per vote received. Then the current round’s malady gets discarded, and the winning player’s (or players’) side effects go to the middle of the table. Each player gets new cards, and now must cure the side effects caused by the most popular medication from the previous round.

The player with the most points after 4 rounds wins.

Look for this game on Kickstarter, beginning February 12!