Mind Space is a flip-and-roll-and-write polyomino game, themed around trying to make space in your brain for everything from hobbies, to friendships, to finances. As a big fan of roll-and-writes and long-time fan of Tetris, this game is a perfect fit for me, not to mention the struggle I have juggling my own brain space.
Wait, what’s a polyomino?
I had to explain this to my board game group, and as a maths nerd I was more than happy to. Polyominoes are shapes made up of stuck-together squares - the tetrominoes in Tetris are four-square polyominoes, and dominoes are two-square polyominoes. Polyomino is just the general name for shapes made of any number of squares. (And polyforms are the general name for combinations of shapes - there are also polyhexes, for hexagons, and polyiamonds, for triangles.)
Mind Space has you pulling cards from a deck of four-square and five-square polyominoes, and drawing them on the grid of your “brain board”. Each turn you roll a set of coloured dice, and the number rolled determines which of the five face-up polyominoes you can draw in that die’s colour. The brain boards and scoreboards are all dry-erase, with five brightly coloured markers to match the dice. I actually can’t emphasise enough how bright the markers are; they’re actually quite difficult to wipe off, and the orange in particular is unnaturally bright.
The colours represent the various parts of life that might be taking up space in your brain: relationships, friendships, hobbies, finances, and self-improvement. Each category scores differently - for example hobbies score based on how many hobby squares are next to friendship squares at the end of the game, and relationship shapes only score if you’ve drawn the same shape in another colour. Finances are a bit different, with you earning money for drawing green finance shapes, and then spending it to get certain advantages.
So, how does Mind Space play?
Despite me saying this game was a perfect fit for me, it did take me a good few plays to get into the groove of Mind Space. With the different scoring conditions for each colour, plus goal cards that give you even more scoring conditions, I found it very overwhelming for my first few games. Based on that, I'd recommend playing your first couple of games without the goal cards; the main puzzle of the game is arranging your polyominoes, so you’re not missing out on anything, and it gives you time to learn the ins and outs of scoring each colour.
My other suggestion would be to only focus on two or three colours at first, which isn’t a bad strategy for maximising points anyway. I avoided trying to score the green finance shapes for a while, since I was a bit confused by how the rules for spending money worked. Fortunately, there’s a clarification on the boardgamegeek forums here if you have the same confusion I did.
Once you get the hang of the scoring, the puzzle of Mind Space is very satisfying and surprisingly crunchy. Unless you get really unlucky with your rolls (like, 1 in 7776 unlucky), you’ll always have multiple options for what to draw, plus the option of drawing a two-square domino in any colour if you’re struggling. However, you can’t draw two shapes of the same colour next to each other, and new shapes must be directly adjacent to existing ones. So between all these options and restrictions, deciding what to draw and where can be surprisingly tough.
What are some other pros and cons?
One potential downside of Mind Space is that it isn’t an especially social game, although there are enough boards to play with five people. The only bit of interactivity is the goal cards - if you complete one first, you get more points. The solo rules try to emulate this too, by having you roll dice after so many turns to determine which goal card to swap to the lower scoring side. I do prefer it as a solo game, personally; it’s more suited to a quiet evening in than a big board game night.
Mind Space also has a bunch of replayability baked into it from the ground up. There are 15 goal cards that you’ll pick 3 from each game, and the randomness of the card-drawing and dice-rolling ensure that all your games will unfold differently. When playing in a group, the amount of choice per turn guarantees everyone will have a different board by the end. Plus there are two sides to the brain boards, one a bit more difficult than the other, and there’s nothing stopping you from mixing and matching with players at different levels.
Give me the overall verdict
Mind Space packs a lot of game into a small box. It’s a quiet, crunchy puzzle with lovely thematic art and fantastic replayability. It’s got a great solo mode, but isn’t very interactive when playing multiplayer. I’d also recommend the upgrade pack, which includes an extra set of markers and a very satisfying set of brain dice (which I’m using in my photos). It does take a little while to learn all the scoring conditions, but once I did the puzzle and replayability really pulled me in.
