The Mind It's the early 2000s. I'm in my early twenties, but for the sake of the scenario let's say it's the grad school years, so 2004ish. I'm out in my favourite pub with my friends, and after a few beers we move on to the Purple Turtle, the nightclub underneath the Oxford Union (famously opened by a young Michael Heseltine). We're not there because it's any good, but mainly because it's a place for a few extra beers back when last orders at 23:00 was a thing and the night is still young. I've been talking all night to a friend of a friend, but after a short appearance on the dancefloor the house lights come up and before I know it I'm back outside on a cold November night in Oxford heading down to my cheap digs.
A few days later, a friend asks me if I remembered X. I look mildly confused as I search my memory, before nodding and saying 'he was alright, I s'pose' .
'Kern.... he was totally in to you....'
'Oh'.'The Mind' is every situation you've awkwardly misread, every sign you've ever misinterpreted, and every bought of l'esprit d'escalier you've ever had, all condensed into one tiny box. In short, it's the live action roleplay version of date night with Kern.
There are 100 cards in the deck. You and your team draw up to the current level you're on. Level 1 - get one card. Level 2, two. And so on. All you and your friends have to do is play your cards in ascending order. Easy. Multi-player solitaire. That's the game.
Except you're not allowed to communicate. At all.
So, if I'm holding a 34, whilst Groucho, Harpo, and Chico are holding 10, 56, 88, and 100 respectively, I need to wait long enough for Groucho to play the ten whilst at the same time trying to stall Harpo from playing his 56. But if I hold back too much, and Harpo drops the 56, we've failed and lose a life. No more lives, and that's it. Game over.
It's even more tense when two of us are holding cards that are close to each other. Is he suggesting that I carry on moving towards the pile, or have I got this completely wrong and he thinks I'm one higher than him? Arghh....
To make it easier, we start with one shuriken (thematically this makes sense, as the rest of the artwork involves bunnies). At any point, a player may raise their hand. If everyone else does so, the shuriken is thrown and we all drop our lowest-ranked card. This can be a handy release, but you need to time it properly otherwise you've wasted your advantage. But if everyone is holding back, it helps ease the tension slightly.
There are twelve levels, and as you advance you get extra lives and shurikens to help you on your journey to total understanding. It took us four games to complete level seven, by which point we'd started to work out what each player's little eye movements and otherwise unnoticeable gestures might mean. Yet without talking, it's really hard to actually know if you've got the mood of the table right, especially in the later levels when the lives are low and the shuriken supply exhausted so playing every card becomes an act of utter agony followed by an almost euphoric sense of relief.
So, did we actually enjoy this?
Well, the fact that when we lost we immediatly reshuffled the deck and started again is probably a good sign that we were actually having fun, were starting to get the hang of it, and wanted to beat it.
But, during play, every single decision I made was wrapped up in as much self-doubt and pain as when playing poker for high stakes (£3.20 based on my experience of late night undergraduate penny poker in the CU president's room), the hardest rounds of 'Modern Art', or that round in 'Ticket to Ride' where you know you could possibly make the ticket you've just drawn but you lack the right colours and the player next to you is dangerously low on carriages. And all we're doing is just laying down cards in sequence!
I remember the first time I won a game of 'Pandemic', after several failures and near-misses. I remember finally beating 'the Grizzled'. I remember how satisfied I was on both occasions. I think beating 'The Mind' and reaching level 12 will be just as satisfying. And perhaps reaching a higher state of being will just be as good as saving the world from plague or surviving the trenches.