A supercar for four dollars sounds like an obvious bargain, but the Sidemen quickly discover that building the perfect dream house requires more than grabbing the flashiest available luxury. With each participant holding a fictional $20 budget and competing for limited selections, the group transforms a straightforward auction game into a surprisingly entertaining contest of personal priorities, tactical bidding, and friendly sabotage.
The opening house draft establishes the format through desirable features such as a games room, recording studio, private gym, bowling alley, mansion, and garden. Each player must balance the temptation to secure an appealing feature against the risk of spending too much before better options appear. The uncertainty creates genuine tension, particularly when participants deliberately increase bids to drain their opponents' budgets. Some of the funniest moments come from players pretending they have no interest in an item while clearly calculating how much their rivals are willing to sacrifice.
The group's chemistry carries much of the entertainment. Harry's unpredictable bidding, Toby's relatively quick completion of his house, and the ongoing arguments about whether certain features are genuinely desirable create a lively atmosphere. The participants regularly challenge one another's decisions, sometimes questioning whether a luxury addition would actually improve their everyday lives. These exchanges make the competition feel spontaneous rather than carefully scripted, with humor emerging naturally from contrasting personalities and priorities.
One particularly enjoyable aspect is how the house draft gradually shifts from collecting expensive attractions to considering what makes a property comfortable and practical. A mansion initially appears valuable simply because of its status, but the players later question whether it offers enough beyond a conventional house. Meanwhile, features such as a garden, gym, or recording studio receive different levels of appreciation depending on individual lifestyles. The resulting discussion gives the game a small but meaningful layer of personality beyond simply choosing the most extravagant options.
The second round replaces luxury housing with favorite foods, introducing hamburgers, burritos, fried chicken, fish and chips, Chinese cuisine, pizza, ramen, dumplings, shawarma, lasagna, and tacos. This change works particularly well because food preferences produce stronger disagreements than property features. Some participants enthusiastically pursue particular dishes while others reject popular choices outright. The competition becomes especially amusing when players realize they may have spent too much on early selections and must accept whatever remains available.
The food draft also produces some of the strongest tactical moments, especially toward the end when remaining budgets and available slots determine who can still compete. Arguments about whether lasagna should count as pasta, debates over the appeal of chicken wings, and the desperate calculations surrounding tacos give the round an entertaining combination of strategy and absurdity. However, the rapid exchanges occasionally make it difficult to follow the exact bidding sequence, and some of the rules are explained more through disagreements than through a clear introduction. Viewers unfamiliar with the format may struggle to track every player's remaining budget and selections.
The concluding discussions provide a satisfying opportunity to compare the different approaches, although the voting remains informal and largely subjective. Participants assess the houses according to personal comfort and usefulness, while the food selections are judged through individual taste and the ability to satisfy different preferences. The absence of a clearly established scoring system limits the competitive payoff, but the friendly arguments remain enjoyable. Ultimately, the entertainment comes less from identifying an undisputed winner than from watching the Sidemen defend questionable purchases, reconsider their strategies, and argue over what constitutes the ideal collection of luxuries or meals.
Pros
- The $20 auction format creates an accessible competition with meaningful decisions about spending, saving, and anticipating future selections.
- Natural group chemistry, playful sabotage, and competitive teasing generate consistent humor throughout both drafts.
- Contrasting personal preferences make the house selections more interesting than a simple contest to acquire the most expensive luxuries.
- Switching from dream houses to favorite foods refreshes the challenge and introduces entertaining disagreements over popular dishes.
- Strategic bidding and limited remaining budgets create genuine suspense during several late-round decisions.
- The final comparisons encourage participants to explain their choices rather than treating the selections as automatically superior based on price or prestige.
Cons
- The bidding rules and restrictions are not always explained clearly, making some exchanges unnecessarily confusing.
- Rapid overlapping conversations occasionally obscure who is bidding, passing, or securing a particular selection.
- The lack of a consistent scoring system makes the final judgments heavily dependent on personal preference.
- Some disagreements over individual foods and house features become repetitive without substantially advancing the competition.
- The ending provides more casual discussion than a definitive competitive resolution, slightly weakening the payoff after two extended drafts.
The Sidemen deliver an enjoyable combination of budget management, competitive improvisation, and personality-driven comedy through two simple but effective drafting challenges. The house round offers entertaining strategic choices, while the food round benefits from stronger disagreements and increasingly desperate bidding decisions. Although clearer rules and a more structured conclusion would improve the competitive experience, the group's chemistry and unpredictable reactions make this a consistently amusing watch.
