Designed by: Wolfgang Warsch
The Mind is a co-operative game where the players work together to try and get through the whole deck of cards, numbered 1-100. How this is achieved is both simple, and devilishly difficult!
The cards are shuffled and at the start of the game – level one – each player is dealt a single card that they keep secret. When play begins, there is no verbal communication (about play) at all. Everyone’s task is simple – to play the cards to the table in ascending order, timing your own card so you don’t leap in before someone plays a lower one, but don’t drag your feet so somebody with a higher one plays before you.
With only one card per player, that’s a not-too-demanding task (though believe us, it can still go wrong!). However the next round is level two, and now you have two cards each. On level three you’ll have three cards, and so on. Each level makes it progressively less likely you’ll succeed, and progressively more tense as you try to synchronise your speed of play to get the cards down correctly!
The game does provide some help – you can win ‘lives’ that let you re-set after a mistake, or spend shuriken cards that allow all players to junk their lowest card – not only making the task slightly easier in terms of volume, but also providing some helpful information about who should play next…
In the unlikely event the players reach and succeed in navigating their way through the highest level (8 with four players, more with less!) – they win!
The Mind is an exquisite piece of minimalist co-op game design. Cooperative it may be, but everyone playing will be absolutely testing their wits to not be the one to let the team down. It's brilliant because it makes you feel like mind readers, and it does so with almost no smoke and mirrors at all. This is a classic of the "Why didn't I think of that?" genre - a game so simple it feels as if you yourself could have dreamt it up during a short train journey. The answer to that question, for me anyway, is "because even if you had, you'd have immediately dismissed the idea as something too simple to work." Games like this seem to be born from exceptionally free thought - a designer managing to switch off the nay-saying critical voice and just try something that sounds stupid - hooray for people like that.
None
None - despite the fact there may be silent seconds ticking by with nothing happening on the surface!
Absent
Absolutely
2-4
Players
8+
Years
15-30
Mins
Sam says
I know not all games are for everyone and fun is by definition hugely subjective. Some folks may find The Mind boring I guess, if they don't like co-operative games, or need a phaser set to kill. But for me, this was and is a fascinating, palpably-tense and yet hilarious exercise in trying to think the same way - I haven't experienced another game like it in that regard. You can't communicate about your cards, but there's no rules against laughing or shrieking like a bunch of lunatics, which is a good thing. A game so simple you wonder why you didn't think of it yourself - and yet at the same time, a work of genius! I wanted to play it again immediately.