Home Grown Hearts Academy Homeschool Blog: Out of the Box Games ~ Snake Oil ~ Review

Are you a fan of playing games? We love having family game night at our house and recently we had the opportunity to add a new game to the mix. We were blessed with the chance to review Snake Oil from Out of the Box Games. It is such a fun and entertaining game!

What is Out of the Box Games?

Out of the Box Games creates innovative party, card and board games that provide fun and engaging ways to enjoy time with friends and family. Since 1998 they have become a leading American game company. They are the proud recipients of the most prestigious awards in the game world.

What is Snake Oil?

Snake Oil is a hilarious and fun party game. The game can be played with 3-10 players and is recommended for ages 10 and up. It's so easy to play. The ease of play made playing it with my family enjoyable. I'm not a fan of games with difficult instructions, so I'm glad this one wasn't like that. You can actually open the box, read the rules and began playing within a few minutes. I played Snake Oil with my husband and our three daughters.

The Rules:

Deal out 6 “word” cards to each player
One player draws a “customer card”.
The player who draws the "customer card" assumes the role of whatever is on the card
The other players choose two of their "word" cards to create and pitch a product the customer would want.

The winner of each round is the person whose product was chosen by the customer. The winner then receives the customer card. Each player should draw two more cards to always have 6 word cards. The person with the most customer cards after each person has been able to be the customer wins the game. The game takes approximately 20-30 minutes to play. There are 336 word cards and 28 customer cards that have customers on the front and back. That equals 56 customers. Everything needed to play comes packaged in the box. There is no need for score cards, pencils, or anything.

As you can read from above, the rules are pretty simple. We absolutely loved the creativity this game allows. It was a blast to see my family being so silly and having such a good time. We definitely had quite a few laughs while playing. I liked that players can’t just sell anything they want. They’re limited to what they can come up with by only choosing two cards from the cards in their hands, which made for some pretty crazy product pitches.

My youngest is 8, so she didn't really meet the 10 and up criteria, but she really wanted to play with us. So, of course we let her. We did have to help her with a couple of words, but once she learned them she was able to come up with some pretty cleaver product pitches on her own. She even ended up winning a game or two. I actually lost count of how many times we played, but it was a bunch. It was just so enjoyable after a long day to sit back and play and not have to worry about anything but having fun as a family for awhile.

While the game is fun it is also very educational. Some of the educational benefits include:

Imagination
Creativity
Innovation
Oral Presentation Skills
Persuasion Strategies
Comparing
Contrasting
Evaluating
Improvisation Skills
Reading
Vocabulary Building
Social Skills
Risk Taking

It's no wonder that Snake Oil has so many educational advantages as it was created by a teacher. You can read all about the educational benefits, how Snake Oil can be used in a classroom, and how it aligns with common core standards on the Out of the Box Games website.

I'm not sure my daughters even realized how many skills they were improving on, because they were having so much fun. It was nice for me to be able to see it. It was also pretty cool when my daughter, who is a struggling reader, was starting to read the cards she was previously having trouble with.

Also, did you know that real snake oil really did exist? Another fun addition is the fact that printed on the backside of the rules, is a really neat little history lesson about the true history of snake oil. This was a lesson for all of us and we found the information very interesting.

Would I recommend this game? Absolutely! It's a wonderful game and I think everyone would benefit from owning it. You know what they say - Laughter is the best medicine! There was no shortage of laughter in our home while playing Snake Oil for sure.