Can You Think Like a Shrink and Predict Your Friend's Emotions?

Your first celebrity sighting! Does it make you happy? Surprised? Does it make you think more of a zebra, a paintbrush, or a wooden box? Will your friends guess which ones you chose?

Published by Two Docs in a Box, Think Like a Shrink is a party game for 2-6 players, ages 17 and up, with a playtime of 30 minutes.

Gameplay

Each round one player is the patient, and the other players are all the shrinks. Five snapshot cards are placed face-up on the table, each of which shows an image. Finally, a prompt card is revealed. Prompts can include, for example, ‘you accidentally sent an email complaining about your boss to your boss’ and ‘you lose an important possession that cannot be replaced’.

The player who is the patient secretly selects one snapshot he associates with that prompt and writes down the reason why, as well as which of six emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, surprise) he most closely associates with that prompt and snapshot combination.

Then all the other players simultaneously reveal which snapshot they believe the patient chose, then they take turns guessing the reason why and which emotion the patient selected. After everyone has finished guessing, the patient reveals his answers, and each shrink earns one point for each of the three elements (snapshot, emotion, and reason) that he guessed correctly.

A new round is then set up with a new prompt, snapshot cards, and patient. The first player to score 10 points wins.

Review

Think Like a Shrink has some fun elements to guess, and the combination of not just trying to figure out which picture the patient chose, but also the reason and emotion adds some unusual layers to the gameplay. It makes you think about interesting combinations and how someone’s mind might work.

Each player has a hand of cards that show the six emotions in the game for when they are guessing, and each one, besides listing the emotion in big letters, also has extra emotions that can fall under that main, dominate emotion. For example, the surprise card has both ‘amazed’ and ‘awed’ written on the card, as well as seven others. This is quite helpful, especially for the player who is the patient, who might initially feel stumped at a prompt. It also helps the shrinks to consider different ways the patient might interpret an emotion. It’s a clever design choice that makes the game easier to get into when you’re first starting out.

There are a few elements that are left unclear, however. For instance, the rules should clarify the winning conditions better. The rules state that the first player to ten points wins the game, which implies someone can win in the middle of scoring. But the scoreboard goes past ten, which seems to imply that reaching ten points is the end-game trigger and the winner is the player with the most points after scoring is fully resolved. Regarding scoring, we were disappointed that there is no way for the patient to score, as it’s always a nice touch when everyone has a chance to earn points every round.

This game is rated 17+ and there is some adult material in the prompts. There is nothing too "out there" or risqué, but there are definitely prompts that some groups may wish to skip. We did quite like the snapshots, though, and there’s a fun range of images chosen — it can be quite amusing to see how players connect them to the different prompts.

If you enjoy adult party games, this one has a fun guessing system, and a few familiar ideas mixed in with some new ones.

Pros: Variety of images chosen for snapshot cards, nice design of emotion cards, unique theme, wide range of things you are guessing

Cons: A few elements in the rules are vague, the patient cannot score

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.