The Mind Game Review

     The Mind

The Mind might look simple at the start, but as the game progresses by passing it’s levels, things start getting very interesting. The players would work as a “team” to defeat all of the levels. Well… why “team”. During the game, players must not share their information to the rest of the members and can’t show their cards before they make the and set their cards on the table.



Description

No. players: 2-4 (best if there are 4 players)
Age: 8+
Duration: 20 min
Type: family, party
Category: card game, deduction

Game Mechanics

A cooperative play: As said before, all players work together for them to be able to pass all of the levels until victory, the game has been defeated. In this game, players can not talk about their cards, they can’t show to other team members before the play. Players must make effort to avid communication about the game, not even tips said, that would be cheating to all of themselves and the game.

Hand management: There are special cards in the game different to the ones used to play on the table to complete the game objective. Such cards, reward players for playing the cards in certain sequences or groups. In this case, as the players gain levels throughout the game, as a reward for advancing a new level, they all get an extra life or a wildcard in a certain way.

Variable player order: Players don’t have a specific order of who makes the first move. Every round, any player can decide if they make the first move and the next player can be also random until they finish the round. In this game, each level is a round, each round is finished when all players have discarded all of their cards according to the rules and then they advance to the next level.

Objective

 All players must each up to level 12 with at least having their actual life to be able to finish the game.

Rules of the game

 There are up to 12 levels in the game. The deck contains cards with numbers on them from 1-100. There are also life cards and a shuriken card. At level one, each player would be given a card. According to the number of participants, the group would be given such amount of lives. There is no order for who throws first the card, but players must keep in mind, the cards played on the table must be played from lowest to highest number. Players must not speak about their card numbers, they can’t know which cards you have at the moment. If someone were to place a card on the table lower than the previous card played by any of the members, they all would lose a life and start over the level they were on. If they lose all of their lives, it’s game over for everyone. The level is finished when everyone has no cards remaining on them, so they pass to level two and this time everybody gets two cards. This means that in level three, three cards, until the players have reached up to level 12. If everyone decides to use the shuriken, each player discards their lowest card face up, this would be very helpful to complete the level.



My experience

After you and your teammates get the hang of the game’s rules, it becomes very fun, an enjoyable game to play. At first it might seem kind of confusing to understand the instructions, but it’s actually straight forward. As you get more cards, you start to feel the need to say or give tips of how high or low your card are. I notice that there isn’t any confrontation against the players, no heavy raged discussions. It is hard when there are 4 people participating in the game, there are more chances of playing the wrong card, it’s hard to tell who has the lowest card to set on the table. The average level we got up to was level 5, which means 20 cards to set on the table in ascending order. Now imagine being able to reach level 12, that would be 48 cards if you were to play with three other players. I believe that it is not one of those games where if you practice and practice a lot, you gain more ability, more experience where you could be a pro at it and master the game. It more of a luck game, probabilities, deductions and it would be convenient if you knew very well your team membres, if they were very close friends, without being able to talk, you have an idea of their expressions what they are trying to say.

I liked The Mind, at first when I saw the cards on the table, I thought “oh, we are all going to play against each other”. As my team and I read the rules, at first it was confusing but we managed to figure out how it’s played. I enjoyed it, I was not expecting to play all four of us as a team. The game got harder as we passed the levels because each of us had more cards to get rid of and more possibilities to lose. It is an easy game to carry around with you. I consider that it’s a very practical game to get entertained wherever you are with a couple of friends and are pretty board. Give it a try, you might also like it.