Games
How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
Art is subjective. What it conveys can mean different things to different people. The Vibe is a game about conveying your interpenetration about various pieces of art to the other players in the game.
What you do is reveal 10 cards, five face up and five face down. The face down cards will have various themes or emotions...or vibes if you will. The Vibe (that is what they call the first player, not the general vibe) then chooses one of the themes printed on the back of the five face down cards. They then arrange of other five face up cards to match their selected theme with the card on the farthest left being the one that least fits the theme and the the one on the farthest right being the one that most fits the theme. The rest of the players are the “mind readers” who must choose which of the five themes The Vibe player is trying to indicate.
So, what is the vibe for The Vibe? The Vibe for The Vibe is just vibing. In order to win, the “Mind Readers” have to have three wins in a row. And to lose? Uhhhh, there is no losing. That should make it clear: This is far more of an activity (and conversation enabler) than a game. The setup and execution of each round will last a fraction of the amount of time spent discussing why “The Vibe” chose to assemble them in that order after the round is over. The debate between the “Mind Readers” as they make their selection is also a key game point but is still almost secondary to the inevitable delving into The Vibe player's choices.
Some of the themes found in the game are Greed, Grief, Joy, and Rebellion. As you play the game, you will find that some of the themes work against the game itself. I'm not talking about trying to convey abstracts with artwork, I'm talking about having “Grief” and “Loss” come out in the same round. Or “Euphoria” and “Joy.” I'm all for a challenge but how do you line up images to differentiate between Joy and Euphoria? The simple answer is that you don't, the main player just ends up picking one of the other available themes for that round.
Another pitfall of the game is that, while you have five cards to rearrange to try to convey the theme, it can degenerate into “Well, this first card is the least likely to convey Rebellion and this last card screams Rebellion, so I'll just arrange the ones in-between semi-randomly and hope the mind readers can deduce that.” So, the post-coital discussion breaks down to just repeating the phrase I just typed.
The cards in The Vibe are huge- the size of postcards. Honestly, they almost have to be this size when almost the entirety of the game is inspecting the cards and divining meaning from them. There are 64 of them in the “deck” and since they come out in random order, it provides a great mixture of choices for The Vibe player.
The Vibe includes a advanced variant called Double Thinking. You still use 5 face up cards but assemble them like a cross and The Vibe picks two themes they will try to convey. This definitely hearkens back to my “Least/Most of this theme with the middle cards not mattering” issue but it's a nice twist if you get to a point where you find the “Game” too easy.
The lack of a losing condition and the basic “Get three in a row correctly” winning condition means that some gaming groups (say, those who assembled to play a hardcore game) can bounce off of it. Sure, you can house rule it so that if you miss three guesses you lose or something of that order. But we found that without a losing condition and with such a weak winning condition, we just played until everyone had taken a turn or two. Or, to put it another way, we just played until we all decided we were done. There have been plenty of other titles who use the “Use various pieces of art to convey something to the other players” but it's usually been shoehorned into the framework of “game.” I'll give The Vibe props for stripping that away and just giving you the core experience.
The Vibe falls into a interesting category. It's a game that I think everyone should experience. But, at the same time, it's not one I'm going to bring out at every opportunity. Repeat plays with the same gaming group gives diminishing returns but the insight into how an individual or a full group perceives art is fascinating. It swings from deep thoughts about how to convey Privilege in a series of portraits to the adolescent humor of selecting an image of a villager urinating in a corner to convey “Relief.”
A review copy of this release was provided by the publisher. Therewillbe.games would like to thank them for their support.
If you enjoyed this review, please consider tipping via My KOFI. All proceeds go to buying more games for review!
