Follow the Works of Sigmund Freud and Delve Into the Depths of Your Own ‘Unconscious Mind’
It’s time to stop worrying what your mom is up to, and start getting ready to unlock the secrets of your Unconscious Mind.
Anytime a gaming company tackles a new theme I’ve never seen before, I take notice. After all, theme is very important to gaming. So when a game about the works of Sigmund Freud pops up in my feed, I want a closer look. So, put away your craniometer, because psychoanalysis is the hot new thing!
Unconscious Mind Overview
Unconscious Mind is a competitive and very heavy euro-style game about Dr. Siggy Freud and his best friends club. The goal of each player is to score the most points by the end of the game. This is done through developing new ideas (worker placement), using your own insight to treat patients (resource management), fine-tuning your own practice (engine building), and a lot of cups of coffee (action point management). But there is also systems for treating grief, traveling around Vienna, holding weekly meetings, getting treatises published, interpreting dreams, and more.
Like I said, it’s a heavy game. Hope you got a big table.
Despite the overall depth of the game, on each players turn they will basically always be doing the same thing: placing a worker. Workers in Unconscious Mind represent ideas. When developing an idea, the player can place the idea token in different locations and orientations. Depending on both of these things, the player will take a different resulting action.
Additionally, each time a player places a worker, they get to activate their player board. Players will add new tiles to their own board, representing them developing their own practice. Each tile provides a different benefit to the player and which tiles get placed on the board is up to the player. This gives a lot of different options for how the player wants to build their overall strategy.
Treating Patients Requires Patience
One of the main actions players will be doing is developing insight in order to treat patients. Throughout the game, players will be ‘leveling up’ the various resources, which represent freedom, passion, and growth. Once these resources are developed, they can be spent in order to treat a patient and score those points. For example, a patient might require a major level passion and a medium level growth to be treated.
Players will also move their professors around Vienna. As they move, they will gain small bonuses. However, whenever a player is out of idea tokens, they will have to be recalled. When this happens, players can gain big bonuses based on where they are in Vienna.. So location matters.
Additionally, players will be able to read the newspaper in order to learn new discoveries. This is required for publishing a treatise, which is another way to score points. There’s also a whole system for using dreams to aid in treating patients as well.
Pre-Order Unconscious Mind Today
There are a few more mechanics and systems we didn’t really get to cover. But trying to explain everything that is Unconscious Mind would be too much to handle right now.
It’s a very strategic game with a lot of depth. Thanks to the various interworking systems, there’s a lot of viable strategies towards victory. If you’re looking for a very heavy euro-game with a theme I’ve personally never seen in a board game, then Unconscious Mind might be for you.
