Hitster: Guilty Pleasures

Gameplay

I am so happy to introduce to you my new favorite party game! Hitster is a combination of a classic guess-that-song game and the history buff game Chronology. Players build a musical timeline by guessing when a song came out in relation to the other songs on their timeline. It’s great for a group and better yet, great for a group of people at different ages.

Hitster comes with a deck of square-shaped cards and a bunch of Hitster tokens (more on that later). On one side of each card, there’s a QR code, and on the other is the name of a song, the artist that sings it, and the year it came out. Each player starts with one card to build their timeline around.

On your turn, have another player (the DJ!) scan the QR code through the Hitster app. It will automatically start playing the corresponding song through Spotify. Now, you must guess whether the song came out before or after the existing song on your timeline. If you get it right, you get to keep the card in your timeline, and if you get it wrong, you must discard it. On your next turn, you repeat the process, but now you must decide if it comes before, after, or between the two existing cards on your timeline, and so on! It gets increasingly more difficult as the years between each song’s release shrink.

The first player to get to 10 cards on their timeline wins! But, no one’s stopping you from playing for hours!

For an added twist, you can incorporate Hitster Tokens into your game. On your turn, if you can guess the name of the song and the artist that sings it in addition to placing it correctly on your timeline, you earn a Hitster Token. You can do one of three things with these:

1. On your turn, you can spent 1 token to skip the current song you’re tasked with adding to your timeline and draw a new card.
2. On your opponent’s turn, you can shout, “Hitster!” and place your token on their timeline if you think they placed their card incorrectly. You must do this before the DJ reveals the correct answer! If you’re correct, steal the card from your opponent and add it to your own!
3. At any time, you can trade three tokens for a music card from the deck, placing it on your timeline without guessing.

History

Hitster: Guilty Pleasures came out in 2023, but the original came out in 2020. Both versions were designed by Marcus Carleson. He got the idea for the game at a dinner party back in 2019. He came prepared with scraps of paper with the same information as the official Hitster cards (minus the QR code) and his guests loved it! Hitster was his debut game, and he originally launched it on Kickstarter, which is where Jumbo found him. Jumbo is now the publisher of Hitster!