The Vibe Review—The vibes are immaculate

The Vibe is a bit of an odd duck. It's a box with a deck of postcards in it that have art on one side and some abstract metaphysical words like anxiety or community on the other, and plays as simply as that suggests. Setup is all of dropping five cards onto the table picture wide up and another five with the word side up. One of the players secretly picks a word, then arranges the pictures in order of how they relate to it. If the other players can successfully guess the word, you set up a new group of cards and run it back. 

As this gig puts a frankly absurd amount of games in front of me, I've grown to value adaptability more than I previously had. Not to say that I don't treasure my titles that demand their players approach them on their terms, of course that's a valid design philosophy. I've just found myself absolutely enthralled by games that warp their shape to fit different  groups or different headspaces. Case in point, when I brought The Vibe back to our Origins hotel room and played it with James,  we were totally con-brained, so I went for the easy win and packed it back up concerned there wasn't too much game in this box. Thankfully, as I've had the chance to table it in the meantime,  I've realized that assumption was paradoxically true and false. 

The Vibe, the player that chooses the word and arranges the art, acts as the table's DM in a way, tweaking the difficulty at their discretion as they discern if everyone needs more or less of a challenge. Granted,  there isn't exactly a plethora of levers, just choosing the word and the “double thinking” variant where you'll go for two words and set the art in a 3x3 cross, but I've found the simplicity to be a blessing. It (along with the grounded artwork) keeps the barrier to entry so low I think it's traveled through my house's foundation and makes the teach so quick The Vibe functions as an actual filler game, unlike games where the teach takes longer than it takes to play. That it remains a satisfying cooperative experience is a testament to Jacob Jaskov's talent, and I'm excited to see more from him.