How would you describe your perfect Friday night if you were Chaotic Evil?
In Kiss The Goblin players react to sometimes outrageous questions while trying to communicate their secret alignment. You’ll get the best score if only one of the other players get it right so don’t be too obvious.
Read on to find out why we are loving the alignment guessing party game.
Disclosure: Thanks to Skybound Tabletop for sending us a review copy of this D&D inspired party game. Links below may be affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
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- What is Kiss the Goblin? (Theme & Components Overview)
- How to play Kiss the Goblin (Rules & Gameplay Overview)
- Who should pick up Kiss the Goblin (Review & Overall Thoughts)
What is Kiss the Goblin?
Kiss the Goblin is a Dungeons & Dragons alignment inspired card game that was designed by Tony Tran. It was published by Skybound Tabletop in 2023.
This party game plays two to eight players with the questions being pretty family-friendly, though, depending on your players, the answers may not always be. The box notes that it is intended for ages eleven and up.
While a single turn of Kiss the Goblin only takes a minute or two, we’ve found full games take an hour or more. That only happens when you play to the full twelve point recommendation.
As a party game, the points really aren’t that important, and we’ve seen people quit way earlier, as well as groups who keep playing well past the twelve point total.
Physically, Kiss the Goblin comes in a rather thick but small box that holds one hundred and fifteen prompt cards, eight sets of six alignment cards, twenty double-sided scoring tokens, and a short but clear game rulebook. The rulebook spends almost as much time explaining the alignment system as they do on game mechanics.
Get at look at these components in my Kiss the Goblin unboxing video on YouTube.
What you won’t find with this game is artwork of any kind. Not even on the box. All you get here are cards with borders and text, and the font choice could have been better. They went with a calligraphy look even though not all of the game’s questions are fantasy based.
In a game who’s only components are cards with text on them I would have preferred a more legible font.
How to play Kiss the Goblin
Getting started in Kiss the Goblin is super simple. Shuffle the main deck of cards and each player picks a colour of alignment cards to use. These are broken into two sets: good, neutral and evil; and lawful neutral and chaotic.
The active player draws two random alignment cards, one from each set, and then draws the top card off the deck and reads it out loud. Some cards have a banner on top that will have you ask the table for more information. For example if you draw a card with an “animal” banner on top, you would ask the group to name an animal, and use that animal when reading the question.
Next the active player answers the question on the card in the way that someone with their randomly assigned alignment would answer it, with the goal of getting at least one other player to guess it correctly.
The other players select two alignment cards from their sets and plays them face down to indicate their guess for what alignment they think the active player is. Once everyone is done these are flipped over and points are scored.
If at least one player guessed the right alignment, the active player gets one point. Then everyone who guessed correctly also gets a point. This means that, scoring wise, the best possible outcome for the active player is that only one player gets it right. The first player to twelve points wins.
The game also includes a special cooperative two player mode. When playing with two you just go back and forth and are trying to get a string of correct guesses in a row. A string of three is great and seven really shows you know your partner.
Of course this is a party game and I expect most people, myself included are going to toss these scoring rules out and just keep playing round after round until you get sick of the game.
Kiss the Goblin couldn’t be simpler and it’s great fun.
Kiss the Goblin is dead simple. Get an alignment, answer a card, there’s lots of laughter, everyone makes a guess, there’s more laughter, get points, repeat.
When I first read the instructions for this game I thought it was going to be too simple. I read it and thought “This is it? This is the entire game? I’m not going to enjoy this.” Immediately I wanted to make the game more complex. I came up up with all kinds of ideas on house rules and was prepared for a bad time our first play. Then we played it with my mother in law and the kids and it was a huge hit!
Not only did it go over well, it went over fantastic. People were laughing and joking around and asking questions. At one point my youngest daughter almost fell off of her chair she was laughing so hard.
What I totally missed, and didn’t expect by just reading the rules, is that the simplicity of Kiss the Goblin is a big part of what makes it work. This game doesn’t need added rules, more complexity, or some deduction. Kiss the Goblin is meant to be a quick silly fun party game and it works great as is.
Since that first game, I’ve had Kiss the Goblin out at public play game nights where it’s been played by a range of players and each time it’s ended up being a big hit. Gwendolen now regularly brings this game to her high school board game club where it’s one of the most requested games.
The only thing in this game that trips players up is the fact that it’s based on the nine D&D alignments. If people don’t already know these from the RPG or from the many memes out there using them, they are going to have a rough time getting into the game. Often the hardest part of introducing this game is getting people to agree to even give it a try.
The Kiss the Goblin instruction book does give you a standard alignment grid with samples for each combination. I often have this out on the table at the start of the game and it gets referenced frequently during play, sometimes even by experienced D&D players.
In general, once people hear how other people answer and watch the way the other players vote, they start to get it. Everyone tends to end up on the same page once you’ve gone around the table once or twice. Also, a part of the charm of the D&D alignment system is that the exact meaning of each alignment is open for debate and is something that has been hotly debated by gamers since the game was first published in the 70s.
That Dungeons & Dragons origins is worth noting. Despite being clearly inspired by D&D alignments, Kiss the Goblin is not a licenced D&D product nor is it even strictly a fantasy game. While some of the questions are fantasy themed there are also modern and sci-fi based questions in there as well. I remember one question about being a cab driver and your fare running off, and another about showing up to a game night where your friends won’t get off their phones.
Despite having fun with the game as it is there’s still a part of me that wants to gamify it more, to turn it into a deduction game. Something like everyone gets a different alignment and you all have to answer a set of the same questions and then people can vote, where you will know what alignment you are but not what other people are.
I think there’s a solid set of house rules that could work here, but this is a review of the game as it stands and as it stands it’s surprisingly solid.
As a silly D&D alignment themed party game Kiss the Goblin does exactly what it’s meant to do. This is a silly, fun, party game that gets people interacting, talking, and laughing together. It’s a great welcome mat game and also a good ice breaker, or get to know each other game.
If you are on the hunt for a new party game, especially if your regular group are, or were, Dungeons & Dragon players, you should consider picking up Kiss the Goblin.
We also think fans of improv games and theatre games will love this one. We can even see teachers picking it up to use in a drama class.
For everyone else, I’m sure you can make up your own mind based on this review. Just be sure not to dismiss the game out of hand because it seems like it’s too simple. While it may be that it only scratches the surface of what you can do with D&D alignments in board game form, that ends up being one of its features and not a problem in any way.
You’ve gotten to the end of a Kiss the Goblin review, you are about to leave a comment on the review to let the world know what you think about the game, what do you write?
No matter what your alignment is, you can share your thoughts by commenting here, hitting me up on social media as @tabletopbellhop, or emailing me.
