Designed by: Bruno Cathala,Théo Rivière
Oh My Brain is a zombie-themed card game, where players are trying to survive an undead attack by deflecting the zombies onto your fellow combatants. Everyone starts with nine brain tokens, and as soon as any player loses their last one the game ends, and the player/s with the most remaining brain tokens win.
Oh My Brain is what’s called a climbing game, in that on their turn players discard to the same face-up pile, and you must discard a higher card from your hand that whatever was played previously. The cards are numbered from 0-19, but there are three specials: after an 8 is played, the next card must be lower instead higher, after an 11 is played the discard stack is removed and a new one is started, and a zero card resets the stack and can be played on top of any number. You’re also allowed to play duplicate numbers; adding one to the discard stack and one to the cemetery of one of your fellow players. At the start of each round, players choose three from nine cards to put in their cemetery, which is visible to only them, and start with a hand of six.
Whenever your hand goes below three cards, you replenish it from your cemetery. If there are no cards in your cemetery to replenish with, you’re making progress: getting rid of the last card wins you the round. If you can’t legally play – because your card numbers are all too low – you lose a brain and pick up two cards from the deck, adding one to your hand and one to your cemetery.
Some cards have a marshmallow symbol on them: if you play one of these, a die is rolled that might have helpful or punitive effects. The die brings an element of randomness that can swing the round away from the likely winner and into the hands of someone else. When a round ends – assuming everyone still has brains – cards are shuffled and redealt, and this continues until someone is knocked out entirely.
There can be somewhat arbitrary feel to Oh My Brain: you might get a duff set of low cards, hit with unfortunate dice rolls and - certainly if you seem to be doing well - targeted by other players adding cards to your cemetery.
Relatively low. Decisions come fast, often at the expense of any real control!
It's a game of low-level tactical decisions, and oft-enforced ones. Silly and mildly chaotic: not bereft of decisions, but not exactly shrewdly strategic either.
It's fun enough, but doesn't quite have the same quirky cleverness of the same design team's Sea Salt and Paper. Fans of speedy low-level chaos may find it a hit though...
2-5
Players
10+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
Oh My Brain is decent fun, but from a game design perspective it seemed to us slightly overcooked: the cemeteries providing a kind of secondary card component is interesting; a sort of semi-ticking clock that allows for player to player sabotage. But the die-rolling felt bolted-on and arbitrary enough that at times it seemed the game was happening to you, as an invested but underpowered spectator. It's not a bad game, and I wouldn't veto playing it, but I don't think it's destined to be a favourite.