Rotten Apples is being billed as "The Tasteless Adult Party Game", and that's exactly what it is. There's no two ways about it- as you might have inferred from the name, Rotten Apples is exactly Apples to Apples. There’s different terms for things but the game plays exactly the same, with just a ton more double entendres and sick jokes.
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Here’s how it works. Each player (it supports 2-10) is first dealt ten Green Apple answer cards. The dealer (“Apple Picker”) is the judge, and he or she chooses a card from the Brown Apple card pile that features a phrase with a prompt in it, things like “I love the smell of _____ in the morning” or “The Eskimos may have fifty words for ‘snow’ but they don’t have one for ____.” These are double sided so we play that you can choose whichever one sounds funnier
The other players have to choose an answer that fills in the blanks in the funniest way and hands them in face-down, and the dearler reads them out loud (between giggles) and decides which is best. Whoever wins gets to keep the Brown Apple card and then becomes the next dealer. The first player to get three Brown Apple cards wins, although in our sessions we kept extending that goal (“Let’s play to five! Seven!”) because the game was too much fun to stop.
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As with Apples to Apples the way you win is by playing to the judge's own interests and personalities, although here you’re basing your choices on just how awful their senses of humor are. You could always go for the “correct” response, but the one that feels most wrong mostly wins here. It does help to know what kind of inappropriate humor the judge feels most at home with, however, whether that’s racism, sexism, or just general dick jokes.
This is a mature game for immature people, and as with other party games like this your enjoyment will all depend on the group people you play it with. Rotten Apples comes with 455 Green answer cards and 65 double sided Brown cards, so much that you're guaranteed to be able to play multiple sessions without even seeing the same card.
It does run into the same problem that other card games do (certain other card games against humanity, for instance) in that there are certain cards that are undoubtedly trump cards. Some of the better cards are funny by themselves (“A thick carpet of black hair”, or “Having someone push in your stool for you”) and work in almost any circumstance because they’re just so outlandish.
But this isn’t the kind of game you play to win- it’s all about having fun with friends (sick, sick friends) and for that, it completely succeeds.
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We received a retail copy from the publisher for this review that is never going to leave the office, because it's perfect for a quick game during lunch. You can pick up Rotten Apples exclusively at Toys R Us. Check out playrottenapples.com for more.