Tabletop_Gaming__Issue_27__February_2019

82 February 2019

PLAYED

truly bewildering iconography, and

before you graduate to its full setup

you’ll have to play a simplied training

game to get your head around its basic

structure. It’s a serious investment of

time and brainpower – if you’re looking

for a chewy, head-scratching, strategic

experience, there are plenty of other

options that will get you into the

action with far less preliminary hassle.

Finally, there’s the fact that for a

game with such lavish artwork and a

theme that purports to revolve around

emotion, Cerebria’s gameplay feels

decidedly dry and technical. You might

be playing cards representing joy, rage,

fear and fullment, but the only real

feelings you’re likely to have are head-

scratching confusion and a desire to go

and play something like Brass instead.

OWEN DUFFY

C

erebria is a beautiful game.

From its wonderfully

characterful artwork to its

dreamlike colour palette, its jewel-like

plastic tokens and its gigantic board

covered in psychedelic illustrations, it’s

one of the most visually striking tabletop

releases you’re likely to ever encounter.

It also comes with a novel theme;

a strategic, team-based game, it sees

you and your fellow players inhabit the

inner world of the human mind, using

dierent types of feelings to inuence a

person’s psyche. As you play you’ll push

them towards happiness and optimism,

or gloom and despair, aiming to claim

victory by having the greatest eect on

their psychological make-up.

It’s a bold and original proposition,

the over-the-top presentation of

which extends to a rotating turntable

contraption that slots into the centre of

the play area and a modular three-

dimensional monolith that you’ll

assemble over the course of the game

to mark your team’s score.

Yet, as physically gorgeous as it is,

it gets bogged down in a morass of

complexity, with rules and mechanical

subsystems piled one on top of one

another in a way that feels confusing,

disjointed and counterintuitive.

As you play, you’ll attempt to gain

control of dierent regions of the game’s

environment, playing emotion cards

to establish your inuence on dierent

regions of the brain. If you’re on the side

of happiness, you’ll employ feelings like

courage and excitement to stake your

claim on areas of the board. If you’re

controlling the forces of misery, you’ll

play cards like anger and jealousy. Over

time you’ll aim to intensify the eect

of your own cards while reducing the

power of your opponents’.

At the same time, you’ll aim to unlock

new actions and upgrade your abilities.

While this lets you make more powerful

plays, it forces you to discard some

of your emotion cards, and there’s a

tricky balance to nd between gaining

new powers and maintaining your

ability to inuence the conict playing

out across the board. On top of these

already complicated decisions, you’ll

attempt to full sets of objectives – some

public, some secret – to add pieces to

the central scoring tower and establish

a lead against your opponents.

It’s a lot to keep track of, but this

kind of complexity can often be very

rewarding in games. Where Cerebria

starts to fall apart is in the way it presents

its intricacies. It comes with some

Playing mind games with psychedelic psychology

CEREBRIA: THE INSIDE WORLD

1-2h 1-4 14+ £63

WHAT’S IN

THE BOX?

◗ Double-sided

game board

◗ 95 trade tokens

◗ 49 building tiles

◗ Five start

building tiles

◗ 42 asset cards

◗ Six governor cards

◗ Five player mats

◗ 175 population discs

◗ 20 status track cubes

◗ Start player crown

◗ Card glossary

◗ Score pad

◗ Four track extenders

◗ Exploit components

TRY THIS IF

YOU LIKED:

TWILIGHT

STRUGGLE

It may have a

completely different

theme, but the

process of battling

for influence across

different regions has

some similarities

to the revered Cold

War game. It’s just

nowhere near as

clean and refined.

PLAY IT? MAYBE

If you don’t mind sinking time and mental

bandwidth into reading the rulebook,

watching an explainer video on YouTube,

re-reading the rulebook and playing a

simplified learning game to ensure you’ve

got the hang of the basics, Cerebria has

some tough branching decisions and top-

notch presentation. If you don’t have the

luxury of unlimited time, though, there

are plenty of more appealing options.