We played this game for date night recently. I bought it used for $3 last summer while thrifting and have been waiting to play it for months ever since! I recommend doing it for a married date night with other married couples. Here’s how it works:

The game is based on the book Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus by John Gray PhD. You want at least 2 men and 2 women to play, so at least 2 couples. Three or more couples would be even better. The men play on one team, the women on the other. Each team has its pawn starting on the planet Mars (for the men) and the planet Venus (for the women), on opposite sides of the board. A path goes from the planet to earth for each planet, with many spaces. So the goal is to be the first team to get to earth. If you succeed with answering a card correctly you get to move a space, or more, depending on how well the team answers. If you know yourself well and the others well and can predict their thoughts, chances are you will win.

It’s better of course to play this in person but we played it in Zoom with two couples involving my husband’s siblings and sibling in-laws. So six total. I controlled the board and the drawing of the cards. It’s fun if you can rig up your phone or iPad’s camera to show the board but not needed to play online. When we lived in AZ I was able to do that by attaching our iPad to our chandelier that hung over the dining room table with bungee cords but alas no such chandelier exists in our new Utah home. Darn.

The cards involve 6 categories:

• Gender Benders (truths and assumptions about the two genders)
• Communication: talking and listening
• Island Fantasies: fantasies and other earthly desires
• Family Affairs: things involving the players’ family details
• In the Flesh: physical intimacy
• The Dating Circuit: what your life was like when you dated
• Scoring Points: the value men and women give to different things

I instigated the house rule that you can skip any card you don’t like and ask for a new card. You can also choose to go silent on a question. That’s called going to the cave for men and the well for women, based on the book. One of the cards made me blush and might make you blush too! Feel free to go through the stack of cards before and toss out any that are inappropriate, or just skip cards as you play and throw out the ones you don’t like. Some of them are just too personal.

It was lots of fun to hear my in-laws’ comments and see how people thought other people would think. I plan on playing this again many times with different couples just to see what they all think, to get to know them all better, and to just have fun! I’ve seen this game at thrift stores a lot so chances are you can find one too!