Cosmo's Truth or Dare is certainly geared toward new couples to help them get to know one another better. The truths, especially, encourage conversation about sexual fantasies, desires, and experiences. The dares get you to perform certain sexual acts, some more challenging than others. The ideas on the card range from hot to hilarious, and will certainly get your partner and you chatting, laughing, and incredibly worked up.

The instructions for this game are pretty straightforward. They are printed right on the inside of the box cover, so you don't have to worry about misplacing paper instructions. Here is what they say, quoted directly from the product, "HOW TO PLAY: Spread the cards out face down, then take turns with your guy picking one at a time. Whenever one of you selects a card, the other person must choose truth or dare. Once the choice is made, the person holding the card reads the challenge out loud...and the other person must take it!" (Note: Although the instruction are clearly heteronormative, the challenges seem to be gender non-specific, and could be enjoyed by any couple). There are no rules or suggestions about what to do if someone really doesn't want to do one of the challenges or answer one of the questions, so that is something you would have to figure out with your partner.

There is no "right" or "wrong" way to play. We chose not to spread the cards out all over the place, just to avoid a mess, and simply picked cards from a face down pile. Things got hot 'n heavy after about our third dare. As we had been pretty sexually active throughout the day before playing the game, he was pretty much done for the night as far as physical activity went, but we continued on with only truths, because we were enjoying talking to each other about our preferences and fantasies.

Cosmo's Truth or Dare is pretty well designed. The cards come in a sturdy, pink box with a magnetic cover. There is a picture on the front of a couple snuggling under the covers with "COSMO'S TRUTH OR DARE" written across the bottom third of the cover in bold, black letters (not discreet). The box measures about 3 inches wide, 4 inches long, and 1.5 inches high, making it easy to travel with. When I brought it to my boyfriend's house, I simply dropped it in my purse.

The cards themselves measure approximately 2.5 inches wide and 3.5 inches long, so they are a bit bigger than the average playing card. They are made of a sturdy, glossy card stock. The cards are not flimsy, and with good care will last a long time. All of the cards have a snakeskin pattern on the back, but they come in three different colors: purple, pink, and magenta. There doesn't seem to be a difference between the cards of different colors, so they probably made them like this simply for variation. On the other side there is one truth and one dare listed, typed in opposite directions on either side of the card.

From personal experience, I know that people like to see some examples when reading these reviews, so here a select few truths and dares so you can get an idea of what types of questions and challenges are included with the game:

Truths:

"What physical trait of mine first caught your eye?"
"If I were handcuffed to the bed, what would you do to me?"
"What food or smell really puts you in the mood?"

Dares:

"I'm going to put on an old shirt of piece of lingerie. Rip it off me like you can't wait to ravish me."
"I'll lie on my stomach. Use your lips to find a supererogenous zone somewhere on the back of my body."
"Lightly scrape your teeth across my collarbone."

This game is meant to be foreplay. None of the dares explicitly require you to have sex with your partner, but they can certainly lead to it!

One downside to the game is that some of the dares require you to go to other areas of the house, which is not always possible for my partner and me. We are both young, and live separately. As I am in college and he lives at home, we don't always have much privacy. When he comes to visit we can't always "hop in the shower", or go to the kitchen and pretend to make dinner as some dares suggest, because there are other people in the house. This doesn't really make the game less enjoyable, though. When we came to those types of dares, we just picked another card and did that dare instead.

I had a great time playing Cosmo's Truth or Dare with my boyfriend. As I mentioned before, we both really enjoyed reading through the truths and talking about the questions. We have only been dating for six months, so we don't yet know "everything" about the each other. Although, we are very sexually open with one another, the cards brought up some ideas we hadn't yet thought to talk about. Couples who have been together for a longer amount of time, and know each other better than we do, might find some of the questions uninteresting or boring. The dares seem to suit all types of couples, though.