Unconscious Mind

Unconscious Mind arrives with the confidence of a large, carefully made object: the production is excellent, and it has that serious, almost ceremonial table presence that lets a working adult forget the office for a while. It is easy to see why its Kickstarter campaign did so well.

At its core sits a buffet of linked little systems, built in a style that recalls a certain well-known Portuguese school of design. You make your choices, shift cards around, connect one decision to another, and collect points at the end; there is always something happening, and it never leaves you idle.

The interaction, as I experienced it, is more about the group collectively overheating than about any sharp confrontation. For players who enjoy finding the right sequence through a dense web of options, the full table and the steady accumulation of points may be reward enough.

For me, though, it lacked the lovely burn of an engine builder beginning to pull itself along, or the taut pressure of resource management where everything must be right to reach your goals. I did not have a bad time; I just would not readily bring it back after a Tuesday at work. It will find people who love it, but for me it remained substantial, polished, and somehow without a centre.