“Don’t ever judge a book by its cover.”  I’m sure a majority of the people reading this were taught this at an early age.  It can be applied metaphorically to a lot of things in life, but I want to talk about the literal meaning of this statement, in the context of board games.  The primary job of a board game’s cover art is to make a (soon-to-be) buyer pick up the box to take a further look.  Does it have to actually represent the type of game you’re going to get?  Not at all.  Many times while perusing my FLGS’ shelves, I’ve seen a really cool looking box, picked it up to check out the back, and been sorely disappointed by what the actual game looks like or even what kind of game it is.

The opposite has been true as well, though.  Both Harmonies and Mind MGMT were games that I knew absolutely nothing about but the box art alone drew me in enough to do a little more research.  I would put Unconscious Mind (partly) in this same category.  I had heard the name and seen a few Dice Tower videos where their reviewers all gushed over the game, but I didn’t have a firm grasp of what the game even was… but then I saw the box art.  I was immediately drawn to it and even though I didn’t purchase it after seeing it that first time, every time I saw it in the store, I’d gravitate back to it.  It was just something about the realistic style of the patient on the couch combined with the intoxicating and fantastical art of the same patient’s dreams.

Obviously, art isn’t everything so how does Unconscious Mind play?  I’m going to focus on the solo mode in this review but even if you’re typically a multiplayer kind of gamer, I think you’ll learn enough about the game here to see if it’s right for you.  So, hop on the couch, dim the lights, and let’s get started.

According to BoardGameGeek, the weight of Unconscious Mind is hovering right below a 4, out of a maximum of 5.  This puts it in the same league as Brass: Birmingham, Ark Nova, and Great Western Trail.  It is rated slightly heavier than Scythe but not as heavy as Spirit Island.  Yeah, that’s a lot of name-dropping but I want everyone to be aware of what they’re getting into.  Obviously, with a game of this magnitude, you should expect a heavy rulebook and you get one with Unconscious Mind.  The main rulebook consists of 24 pages, each filled to the brim with information while the solo rulebook adds another 8 pages. 

What I like about the rulebook is that it clearly communicates each stage of the game.  There hasn’t been a single time while playing, where I had to consult the rulebook and didn’t come away with an exact answer to my conundrum. 

The problem with the rulebook is in the way it is organized, not lending itself to a very informative first, or even second, read through.  I typically read through the rulebook before setting any game up and sometimes I come away with a pretty good idea of how the game is going to work but I can’t say that was necessarily true with Unconscious Mind. 

Without putting the game into action, just reading the rulebook alone left me scratching my head.  There is a section called Concepts thats aim is to outline some of the main ideas in the game but without the context of how a turn or round works, this section was fairly confusing.  So, just be aware if you’re not used to games of this weight, it probably won’t all click until you’ve played it.  Don’t give up after simply reading the rulebook though, you’re going to miss out on a wonderful experience!

Unconscious Mind comes packed to the gills with high quality components, starting off with the assortment of cards. Players will get two decks of larger cards, one being the Latent Dream Cards and the other being the Manifest Dream Cards.  The artwork on these cards perfectly conveys a dream-like state, with otherworldly landscapes, larger-than-life animals, or humans performing impossible feats. 

If there are dreams, there has to be someone to have these dreams right?  That’s where the Client Decks come in, split into Routine Clients and Case-Study Clients.  Unlike the Dream Cards, these cards contain realistic portraits of patrons who might have visited Freud in the early 1900’s.  The two types of Client Cards differ in that Routine Clients, when cured, give an immediate bonus while Case-Study Clients allow for end-game scoring bonuses.

The last set of cards, at least having to do with the act of curing patients, is called the Grief Layer Cards.  These are transparent cards with a Rorschach-esque overlay printed on them that are placed on each Client Card when they appear for treatment.  While these cards certainly look nice, the actual gameplay implication of them is a little, “meh.”

Moving from the clients, let’s look at the therapist-centric components, starting with the Player Boards.  Each Board represents a different one of Freud’s disciples, thus each is printed with a slightly different office look. Whereas Alfred Adler’s board is graced with a kitten, the Carl Jung’s board is adorned with a framed Rorschach painting.  The board itself has to hold a lot of components so thankfully the designers used a double-layer board so that there are notches to hold cubes, tiles and the like.

The Boards have a round cut-out on the right, where the Insight Dial sits. This circular disk is where players will generate their Insights, small, glittering tokens, either clear or tinted in the players’ specific color.  The Insight Dial is split into three wedges (representing Growth, Freedom, and Passions), each with three levels (Minor, Median, and Major).  The Insights will move through these zones as they are upgraded downgraded, or spent. However, these boards are not double-layered so it is very easy to accidentally knock Insights around and lose track of where they should be.

Players will get both a unique Professor Figure and resin Inkpot, both of which will move around separate rondels, activating a myriad of actions. Additionally, the box comes with two more meeples, one representing Freud himself, and the other a Journalist that can be optionally used in gameplay.

Lastly, let’s discuss the two boards that players will be spending time on.  The main board is referred to as The Meeting Table and will be where players place Idea Tokens, essentially their workers in Unconscious Mind, to activate various actions.  This board complements the Client Card artwork perfectly, evoking a late-night meeting of the minds.  Its layout is efficient and minimalistic.

The second board is a City Map of Vienna, used to simulate Freud and his companions’ path around the city, as well as track players’ Scores and Reputation.  Unlike The Meeting Table, the City Map is busy with icons and tags.  Honestly, it might be too busy for the amount players will even use this board, but we can discuss that more in the gameplay section.

Simply put, the game is rife with nice looking and excellently implemented components. Plenty of games have top-notch components but fail in the gameplay department so let’s see which is the case for Unconscious Mind.

Setup & Gameplay

I am self-aware enough to know that I lack a certain degree of brevity when it comes to these write-ups.  The setup for Unconscious Mind mirrors my long-windedness so in order to keep this writing below 20,000 words, please take a look at my How to Play video here for setup details.

A solo game of Unconscious Mind involves a player trading turns with their Id, controlled by a deck of Meeting Table Cards.  From the player’s perspective, his/her turns play out exactly as they would in a multiplayer game.  The solo opponent doesn’t act exactly like a regular player but retains enough of the normal actions that a solo game comes very close to simulating a two-player game.

On the player’s turn, they choose one of three available options: State Ideas, Treat Clients, or Recall Ideas.  Each option can have a multitude of steps so let’s breakdown each one.

State Ideas

This will end up being the option a player will probably most often choose.  The player will take one of their available Idea Tokens and place it in one of the two middle columns of The Meeting Table.  In a solo game, the left and right columns are off-limits, creating scarcity for spots.  Each of these columns contains four rows of action locations but this is where Unconscious Mind breaks away from the normal mold of worker placement games.

Instead of being asked to place an Idea Token on a location to trigger it, the player will need to place them in one of the eight available vacant Idea Spaces, activating one of the nine available actions.  The top and bottom spaces only allow the player to trigger the top or bottom action but they have a choice between the left or middle action, or the middle and right action depending on if the first or second column was chosen.  The two middle spaces of each column offers the player the choice of four actions; both middle actions in both adjacent columns.  OK, if you are confused, here is a picture to help.

Mixing up the general worker placement formula again, Unconscious Mind let’s the player place two Idea Tokens, or supplement with Bright Idea chits, to trigger the action twice in one turn. This might mean players will end up taking fewer unique actions before having to Recall Ideas but sometimes it is crucial to activate a single action twice in a row.  Another reason why this option is so important is that a player can’t ever place two Idea Tokens pointing towards the same action. So, if you know you’ll need to move your Professor around the map twice before recalling, you better place two tokens this turn or you might be waiting a while before you can do it again.

The nine actions come in a variety of flavors. I won’t go into details on every single one but we can break them down into a few general categories. Three actions allow the player to choose Notebook Tiles, placing them in one of the open spaces in the 3×3 grid on their Player Board.  Each tile costs Coffee, with the more expensive tiles giving the buyer a chance to activate it immediately.  The Notebook Tiles act as a personal set of actions for the player as the game progresses.

A second category of actions involves moving characters around the City Map.  A player can move their own meeple or choose to move Freud/Journalist, depending on their desired outcome. Once a character is moved, the player will activate a combination of that location’s actions based on one of the following criteria: 1.) how many characters are present on the location or 2.) how many Tags of that location the player has in their collection.  The movement of characters can also be important to set up a fruitful Recall Ideas turn down the line.

The last category of actions is more of a hodgepodge of things a player might want to take part in, namely drawing/playing Research Cards and Publishing Treatises, or manipulating Insights.  The main objective of playing Research Cards or Publishing is to collect more and more of those Location Tags mentioned earlier while Insights are used for Curing Clients.

Once the player activates the action, they then will move their Inkpot around the rondel on their Player Board.  The number of spaces is between one and four, dependent on which row of actions they triggered on The Meeting Table, though the player can offset this by spending accumulated Coffee.  Three of the Inkpot spaces allow the player to activate whichever Notebook Tiles they have collected in that row.  Similarly, one of the spaces let’s the player activate a column of Notebook Tiles instead of a row.  The last Inkpot space has the player gain rewards based on where both their marker, and Freud’s marker, is at on the Reputation Track.

Basically, Stating Ideas is an exercise in chaining actions. If a player doesn’t purchase enough Notebook Tiles, their Inkpot actions suffer greatly.  But if they skimp out on moving around the map they may never leverage their Location Tags to their fullest potential. Its a lot to think about but when done correctly, the sense of satisfaction a turn gives the player is second to none.

Treat Clients

I know, I’ve mentioned Insights, Clients, and Dreams but still haven’t given you any real insight (sorry…) into any of these parts of the game. Well, here is where the rubber meets the road because all of these concepts come crashing together when a player Treats Clients.

First, let’s look closer at how the Insights work. Typically an Insight is generated when a certain Notebook Tile is activated but there are other ways this can happen including Location Actions and a specific action on The Meeting Table.  Generating an Insight means a player takes an unused Insight Token from the middle of their Insight Dial and moves it to one of the three color sections and into one of the three levels of that section.  Each of these nine distinct areas is represented by a symbol.  Once Insights are generated, other actions can help to upgrade them, downgrade them, or move them horizontally around the Insight Dial.  So, how do you know which Insights you’ll need to generate?

This is where those beautiful Dream Cards come into play.  Each client’s two Dream Cards have a selection of Insight Symbols on them that a player must spend to discard that dream card.  Along with these symbols, each card is emblazoned with a number of Therapy Points.  When the Dream Card is fully paid for and discarded, the player will move the client’s Therapy Marker to the left, equal to the amount of Therapy Points the Dream Card produced.

If the marker lands on, or passes the Grief Icon, the player can discard the clients Grief Layer, grabbing the bonus or Victory Points printed on the transparent card.  This act is called resolving Catharsis in the game.  When I first saw the transparent cards, I was excited to see how they were going to be worked into the game but the fact they ended up just being another card to discard and collect points from was a pretty big disappointment.    Eventually, the Therapy Marker will move all the way to the left, meaning the player has cured the client.  Players gain what is printed on the Client Card and will get to choose a new Client Card at the end of their turn.

The player only starts with one Office open, meaning only one client can be seen at a time. But once the player removes the first Grief Layer, they can open their second Office and start treating two patients at once. Each time the player takes a Treat Client turn, they are allowed to treat both clients but can only treat each one a single time during a turn.

Recall Ideas

Inevitably, the player is going to run out of Idea Tokens nor have the correct Insights to Treat a Client.  In this case, he/she will need to take a Recall Ideas turn.  During this option, the player will return all of their Idea Tokens from The Meeting Table to their supply, gaining Coffee equal to the amount of unique action spots they pulled them from.

Second, the player can either grab a Location Bonus or a highly coveted District Bonus.  The Location Bonuses can help the player get a much needed Insight or Notebook Tile but the District Bonuses can award Heart-Shaped Boxes, Reputation, and additional Inkpot movements.  The Heart-Shaped Boxes are notable as they are the only supplemental way of moving the Therapy Marker when a client’s Dream Cards don’t produce enough Therapy Points on their own.

I will admit that the implementation of the City Map doesn’t feel as fleshed out as the balance of the game although the Journalist and Fireworks modules help.  I think this is driven by the fact that the City Map is primarily triggered only when the player Recalls Ideas, something that is done only sparingly throughout the course of the game. 

Solo AI (The Id) Actions

So, you should have a pretty good idea of how your turn works, but how does the Id play its part in the game?  First, the Id does have it’s own Player Board, Inkpot, Professor figure, and Office to treat clients.  However, it does not need any pesky Insights to cure its clients; using sheer Coffee-power to do its bidding.  Secondly, it will never need to purchase Notebook Tiles, and instead comes equipped with its own nine tiles that will fit, facedown, into its Player Board from the very beginning of the game.

After each player turn, the player will flip over the Id’s next Meeting Table Card.  This card will direct the player to cover up a specific Idea Space with one of the Id’s Idea Tokens, effectively blocking this space from being used by the player.  The Id gets to ignore the action itself, and instead goes straight to moving it’s Inkpot around the rondel.  It will trigger the row, or column, as a player does until it hits the first facedown tile.  This stops the Id’s action but the tile is flipped over so on sequential turns, it will get to trigger an additional action on this row, or column.

Without the need for Insights, the Id ends up trying to convert Coffee, and every other icon under the sun, into Heart-Shaped Boxes.  These conversions are printed on a Conversion Reference Card, allowing players to choose which side they’d like to use to toggle the difficulty level.  At the end of every turn, the Id is allowed to use all of it’s Heart Shaped Boxes to Treat Clients as much as possible.  Eventually, the Id too runs out of Idea Tokens and must Recall Ideas, generating more Coffee to feed it’s Heart-Shaped Box addiction. 

Yes, the Id has a lot more upkeep then what some players might want in a solo game, but with a game this heavy, it is kind of warranted.  I’d rather have more upkeep, and a more fulfilling experience, then for the designer to pull punches and create a solo mode that isn’t even memorable.  If I had one gripe, it’s the Compass Arrow Token, that is supposed to help the player pick left or right when the Id has a choice but the implementation is clunky and I usually forget if I even used it on the last decision.

It has taken me nearly 4,000 words to describe this game, and I still don’t feel that I’ve done it justice.  Simply put, it has skyrocketed to one of my favorites in a miniscule amount of time.  Off the top of my head, the only two other games that have grabbed my interest this quickly has been Viticulture and Scythe.  Not only is the solo game a rewarding experience, my 2-player games have been a blast as well, though I could see downtime at more than two possibly being a detriment.  If you’re looking for a crunchy game with a great mix of mechanisms, I would definitely recommend Unconscious Mind.

Ratings are based on 5 main criteria: rulebook, setup, components, art & graphic design, and gameplay.  The first 4 criteria are rated 1 to 5 and the gameplay is rated 1 to 10.  These scores culminate in an “overall satisfaction” score that is rated from 1 to 10.  If the reviewed game has both a solo and multiplayer mode, I have assigned scores separately to give context to which mode we enjoy more.