A charade game that both celebrities and non-celebrities can enjoy!This was the game that Ellen DeGeneres hyped up throughout 2013. It became so widespread that Warner felt urged to build an app around the same concept. Since then, it has been a centerpiece of family gatherings and small parties all over the world and still stands tall in the social game scene.

Heads Up! is a barebones guessing game where the bulk of the fun is generated outside the mobile screen. The app is relatively straightforward. It merely hands you a deck of cards with some words, names, and other pieces of information that you must guess while team members provide clues (some more useful than others, depending on how your teammates “roll”). 

In contrast, members of the opposing team will attempt to confuse you by giving you mixed signals. You are granted a timeframe to guess whatever is on the screen. If the timer elapses or a team member spells out the word by error, your team loses its turn, and you won’t be able to earn points. When that happens, tilt your head up and let the app do its magic with the accelerometer. If you guessed correctly, tilt the head down instead.

You are given a fine set of decks to choose from: Celebrities, Movies, Accents, Characters, Superheroes, Animals, and Music. Warner also adds new decks regularly according to the current trend or “season”.

It gets genuinely funny when playing the Music, Celebrities, and Animals decks. Your teammates can end up doing loads of pretty hilarious stuff, such as singing a song out of tune (the more out-of-tune, the better!) or doing an uncanny Christopher Walken impression. Oh, and you can also record your friends as they do their antics and replay the video for laughs!

It can also get a bit tricky. If the word to guess is “Dog”, you are sold already. However, some exotic animals may steepen the difficulty curve quite a bit, especially animals such as an “Agouti” or a “Binturong” (believe it or not, these are not made-up words). So far, I haven’t faced any difficulty guessing animals in my playthrough, though it could happen.

On another note, the game is mostly free to play. However, you can buy additional decks, which are not exactly on the cheap side of things. On average, each individual deck can cost a bit over one dollar each, which is more than the price you pay for many full games on the Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store (and that’s based on bundle offers, by the way!)

The app has also suffered some downgrades down the road. For example, it used to allow players to adjust the timer, something that is no longer possible. Sure, it’s no “biggie”, but it makes me wonder why they would scrap that setting without any apparent justification. Developers should be all about giving the most amount of freedom to the player, not relinquishing it out of spite.

On a more positive note, Warner did make some good moves as well, such as integrating the game with Facebook Messenger and Instagram so that it could be featured in video calls via Group Effects and Augmented Reality. This function was implemented at a time when we were enduring strict lockdowns and were not able to gather physically. While it may not have been recomforting enough for people who were hit hard during those days, at least we had something to ease our troubled minds. Don’t you think for a second that I’ve forgotten about the timer option, though! Gosh, what were they thinking again?!

Lastly, the game’s design is not necessarily ugly but not very “modern” either. When you look at it closely, it’s notably old school. Come to think of it, the layout reminds me of a 2012-2013 Flipboard-style app (a design that I found pretty dope, by the way). At any rate, the game’s success had little to do with its UI design. 

Heads Up! is a delightful and serviceable social game for real-life gatherings. It’s obviously not a game you’ll be capable of judging apart from its social nature, let alone playing it. For the most part, I can’t fathom anyone having a bad time playing this game (and did I mention the replays?) My only gripe is with the pricing. If Warner would just offer more discounts on those decks, I would recommend this even more, but, as it stands, it’s still a solid addition to the recommended list!

If you wish to give a heads-up about this game (pun totally intended, by the way), leave a comment below!