Unconscious Mind

Unconscious Mind carries that pleasant feeling of a game made by familiar faces and friends from earlier times, and I was genuinely happy to see it smash its Kickstarter target. Its production is very good and, as an object on the table, it has the weight and presence of a large, carefully made game.

At its core, I find a recipe that reminds me of a well-known Portuguese designer: a salad bowl of interconnected mini-games. One choice feeds or affects the next, and the game asks you to combine its different pieces rather than focus on a single mechanism. It is substantial, full of things to process and organise.

Its flow, as I experienced it, revolves around moving cards around, making use of their connections, and collecting points. Interaction was not what stayed with me most; for me, the emphasis was on the personal brain-burn of the sequence of choices and on how to squeeze the most from your own set of possibilities.

And yet, somewhere in there, I could not find the point. I missed either the sweet burn of an engine-building game that starts to click into place, or the pressure of flawless resource management needed to hit all your goals and achievements. It is probably a matter of taste: I can very easily understand groups who will enjoy burning their brains inside this dense construction. I did not have a bad time, but I would struggle to choose to play it again soon.