Looking for a quick game to challenge your ESP ability? Try out The Mind, and become one with two to four of your friends!
The Mind is a 2-4 player cooperative card game. Designed by Wolfgang Warsch and published by Pandasaurus Games. The Mind plays in roughly fifteen minutes, so nice for a quick pick up and play.
The Mind $14.95
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In more detail, the deck contains cards numbered 1-100, and during the game you try to complete 12, 10, or 8 levels of play with 2, 3, or 4 players. In a level, each player receives a hand of cards equal to the number of the level: one card in level 1, two cards in level 2, etc. Collectively you must play these cards into the center of the table on a single discard pile in ascending order but you cannot communicate with one another in any way as to which cards you hold. You simply stare into one another’s eyes, and when you feel the time is right, you play your lowest card. If no one holds a card lower than what you played, great, the game continues! If someone did, all players discard face up all cards lower than what you played, and you lose one life.
The Mind: Let’s Become One
The object of The Mind is simple, you and your teammates have to make it through 8, 10, or even 12 levels by playing all your team’s cards in sequential order from lowest to highest.
Seems pretty simple yeah? Well, there’s a catch, you cannot speak or communicate verbally about any cards you are holding.
In The Mind, you are trying to form a psychic link or a mind meld if you will, with your teammates in order to play the cards in the correct order. The cards feature numbers from 1 to 100 and each round gives each player a number of cards equal to what level you are on. Your team will only have a few lives in order to complete this challenge or experiment.
Any time someone plays out of order a player who still has a lower number will yell stop! Then all players with any cards that are lower than the played card will discard those cards and your team loses a life.
Lose all your lives and it’s game over. You will have access to shuriken cards that whenever any player feels unsure about their card can raise their hand to vote to use it in order to allow each player to discard their lowest number card.
The fact that you cannot say anything about your cards makes this very challenging and unique. You must look into your teammates’ eyes and mentally glean the information you need to play the cards in the correct order.
The Mind is a fantastic game for people who don’t want to invest in a longer game and just want something quick, simple, but with a higher difficulty. I had a blast with my group playing this game and when we would have a successful round the feeling of accomplishment was euphoric, to say the least. The Mind legitimately makes you feel as though you are psychically bonding with your friends.
There’s no better feeling than playing a card and when your teammates play their cards and it’s literally the next number in sequence by one. You will definitely be ready to play again after your first try.
I can’t recommend this game enough and at $15.00 you won’t find a bigger bang for your buck. This was definitely one of the sleeper hits from my Origins Game Fair purchases this year.
If you have a solid gaming group who loves cooperative games then you need this in your collection.
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About the Author: Christopher Guyton
