You have to say Sorry with that sardonic, nasally voice. Learn how not to be sorry with this popular children’s game from the 1930s. Sorry may be derivative of the classic game Pachisi, but it’s a modern classic in its own right.

We apologize, but we interrupt this review for technical details.

The Fiddly Bits
Designer: Paul T. Haskell, Jr. and William Henry Storey
Publisher: Parker Brothers
Date Released: 1929
Number of Players: 2-4
Age Range: 6 and up
Setup Time: nominal
Play Time: around 30 minutes
Game Mechanisms:
Card Drafting
Point to Point Movement
Roll/Spin and Move

Sorry! Overview

Game Flow:
Players pick a color. Each player starts the game in an area, matching the color they chose. Players must navigate the board and send their pieces to their base at the opposite end of the board from their starting area. To accomplish this, players draw cards from a communal deck and move their pieces in accordance to the cards. The first player to get all their pieces in their base wins.

Review:
I give Sorry some credit for replacing the dice movement of Pachisi with cards. But that’s all I can say for it. Sorry still uses a roll/spin and move mechanism just without the rolling or spinning, and the card draw actually makes it worse for me. At least when I’m rolling a die or spinning a wheel, I have the tactical goodness of those two activities. The deck of cards eliminates the joy of rolling or spinning. Plus, some cards make you go backwards. While that’s a good thing in the early going, you don’t want to go backwards when you’re almost home.

Close-up of Sorry! card

And then there’s the title. You’re not sorry when you bump into someone, but that’s what the card says, so that’s what people say (in that sarcastic, nasally voice I talked about earlier) when they take your piece off the board. You could give Sorry the tagline: teaching children how to be punks since 1929.

Verdict:
How this game remains a family favorite for as long as it has is beyond my comprehension. There are so many better activities you could do instead of Sorry, like reading a book or taking a walk on thin ice.