The Mind is a 2-4 player cooperative game by Wolfgang Warsch released in 2018. This is the simplest game that I’ve taken the time to review, but even so, it may be the one with the most immediate electricity running through its gameplay.

In The Mind, you and a few of your friends sit down with a deck of 100 cards. In the first round you deal out one card per player and are tasked with playing them in numerical order. Like I said, simple. Here’s the catch: you cannot communicate with each other about the cards in your hands. So…how do you begin?

Well, to start with, everyone indicates that they are ready to play by putting one hand on the table to form the “concentration phase”, a ritual that often involves eery stares around the table, sizings up and perhaps a stray giggle. Once all hands leave the table, play commences. The curious looks continue as you try to suss out what cards your teammates may have, with nothing but body language and timing to go off of. One round players may be rushing to put down their cards right away, stumbling over each other with their number 2 and 4. In another, silence falls as everyone waits, thinking “Surely my 53 can’t be the lowest card…or can it?”

Once you’ve successfully stumbled through the first round, you move to the second. This time, each player receives two cards, the rounds getting progressively harder in this fashion. And each time you’ll feel like you’ve just barely eked out your win from the last round. But through this, you consistently feel like you’re getting better as a group, from round to round and session to session.

The feeling you get while playing this game is exciting. This is because The Mind uses the people around you as its main components. Sure, the game uses cards, but The Mind lives in actively listening to the other players in every moment. Nowadays so many games leave you to your own machinations, thinking up clever strategies and only momentarily looking up to remember you’re in a room with other people, whereas in The Mind this is impossible to forget.

I’ll also let you in on a little secret. While The Mind markets itself as a game for 2-4 players, it also plays fine at 5 or 6. This adds a little playtime, and can make the game trickier with you needing to be engaged with more people, but it’s just as fun and is a helpful tweak when an extra one or two people show up. You might just want to give yourself another life to start off with.

All the same, The Mind is not a main event. This is a game that is perfect to bring out and play for half an hour, maybe even stretching to an hour and a half at a time if you have a few goes at it. That means that at a game night The Mind works better as an appetizer as you wait for everyone to show up, or maybe a palate cleanser between games. The Mind shines far better, however, if you bring it to a bar and just have a fun time over drinks, letting the game disappear as the magic fades in subsequent playthroughs. With the $10 price tag, you won’t even be worried about spilling drinks or kids (ages 8+) wrecking the cards. This game is absolutely worth picking up. At that price it’s even worth grabbing a few copies for gifts as well!