Memoarrr!

The game that sounds like a pirate’s autobiography is actually an exceedingly simple undertaking where memory – enemy of mid-life specimens such as GNG – plays a key part.

The games’ several cards – each showing one animal and one background – are laid out in a 5 x 5 grid, face down. The central card gets several Treasure cards and Volcano cards placed on top of it – more on those momentarily.

Each player gets to secretly look at the three cards closest to them, and then Memoarrr! begins with the starting player flipping a single card. From then on, play is simple: on your turn, flip over a card that matches either the previously-flipped cards animal, or its background. If you fail, you’re out of the round and pick up volcano card. The last player standing gets a treasure card, which has a hidden value of between 2-4 points on the back. But you can’t look at it yet!

A new round then begins with all the cards flipped face-down and the Volcano cards returned to the stack. In theory, you’re gaining more and more information – or at least, opportunity to register it – in every round, but it’s surprisingly hard to remember the identity of 24 cards, and one card is of course unavailable for the whole game, hidden beneath the volcano and treasure cards. When the final round is played and the last treasure card is taken, all players reveal their scores and the player with the most points wins.

If that doesn’t sound quite mind-melding enough, you can also play with the special powers: when four of the five animals are (successfully) revealed, they grant you a temporary special power which you must use. Three are helpful, one is more of a curse!