Cerebria: The Inside World Review - with Tom Vasel

[Music] and now it's time for another diced our review with Tom vassal hey folks I'm Tom vassal and if there's one thing that we all can agree on that said inside out is one of the greatest Pixar movies ever to come out well maybe we won't agree on that but if you disagree with me on that you are wrong inside out is a great movie another thing that I think we should all agree on is here that mine clash games knows how to make unique interesting themes no trading in the Mediterranean no role in right no zombies or generic fantasy but something interesting so here we have Sarah Bria the inside world which is kind of like inside out the movie a little a little more you know we got some negative bad evil emotions here and you're competing back and forth this is for two or four players as you compete to get the most points so either gloom will win or bliss and that's what this is and that theme really had me interested not to mention the last game I played from these guys an Akron II has is rapidly becoming one of my favorite games of all time and it just a lot going on that in this game when I open up this one there's a lot going on in this one also let's take a look [Music] now realize that I'm just going to kind of give you an overview here I'm not giving you all the rules to play this game because there really is a lot going on but the game is going to be 2 or 4 players and those players are going to be picking characters you're gonna be playing the negative emotions I guess like misery against harmony and delight and hatred and anxiety and malice and empathy and love so you're going to play one on one or two one two and you're gonna get these boards there's an a side to the board where they're all pretty much the exact same and then a b-side where you'll have different differences on how these work so players gonna have these the goal of the game is to get the most points there's a little wheels up here if someone reaches 20 the game will end and at the end of the game there's going to be this tower that's being built in the middle and the size of your pieces are gonna give you points like the big one's gonna give you 5 the small ones will give you 3 and whoever puts on the top piece that piece is an additional 4 points it will get a little higher than that then you're also going to get points for meeting these aspirations there's common ones that all players can do and then you'll have your own a hit in one that you are just trying to do like for example here have more adjacent emotions if we pull that off we'll be able to score that and various other things that you'll be able to score with your own board we have the Bliss versus gloom here now each player is going to have a deck of cards so you're going to start with some emotions on the board to brightnesses and tube weaknesses but each player's are on cards the cards you'll see these have a little moon on him there's another deck that doesn't and you can pick a starting deck or you could pick anything you want really and you're gonna make a deck you'll notice there's different types here and they have a certain amount of control that they'll have on the board and special abilities and even over the course of the game you will be able to upgrade them into bigger and worse emotions and so that's kind of the goal because what you're gonna be doing is you're gonna be trying to control various areas on the board one of these areas is called realms so the realms are here you can see this one here the gloom side controls it although if the switches we just turn that over to see who controls it they control because they have a bleakness with a control of one here however let's say maybe courage showed up over here and then the marker moves over to the number two spot then now bliss would control this side because courage would beat out bleakness so these are realms you also have frontiers frontiers are going to be on these lines here they're usually matched up in the very middle there's a spinning wheel and so they're going to be controlled by these three cards rather than the other two cards and so players are going to be going back and forth trying to control these different areas because that's a lot of the way the aspirations are scored but it also gives you more options as the game goes by player is going to be taking turns doing actions with their spirit and they're going to be using vibe tokens here to keep track of which of your actions at the beginning you'll start with four of your actions unlocked and as time goes by you'll be adding more spirit tokens it to be different colors in each of the the lines to make your action more powerful or in the case of the last one basically just making it cheaper remembering a course that on the B side of the board there's going to be various weird or actions and won't be going through all those at all but these actions are going to be allowing your spirits to be able to do things and move around the board because your spears are going to be starting here and moving around these spaces accomplishing the goals to help you win the game so on a player's turn they're going to be able to use one of these actions that they have but before they do that they can discard a card from their hand and place a vibe token that matches this on in action to make that action better of course you're giving up that card doing other things with that so we have these different actions we have the move which is going to let you move around the board and so and you're going to notice that there's costs here although you can make it less of a cost to move around the board are you able to move through other people are you able to move quickly there's invoke emotions this is how you're gonna get more emotions on the game board maybe I want to put craving out on the game board hmm I'm craving some key lime pie well that's a negative emotion anyway and so to be able to place these at the board you're going to be using willpower that's the cost of this game by the way you have this willpower that you'll be using and getting more of and this is how you're going to be doing the different actions that you can pull off players are going to be taking actions to move these tokens and make them better or to even quell them to get rid of the opponent's actions and get them off the board remember you're starting with a couple bleakness and brightness on the board depending what team you are but I'm at where much rather have dislike and loneliness and boredom and passive pessimism and jealousy and embarrassment on the board or like I said upgrade your things like the good guys can upgrade to passion and benevolence and valor and and euphoria and serenity and hope man these are just these are much better cards you'll notice that their numbers also increase as you have them on the board players are also going to have the ability to fortify to place things on the board and you build these forts and this is one of the ways to get things into the middle and add them here you're gonna be needing to move around to the different locations but there's just that constant keeping up with these actions so you want to keep track of the actions you have here the move and vote quell fortify empower you have these action that you can take and they're gonna cost different amounts of these crystals now you're gonna get these crystals by absorbing there was an absorbability here you could use it once each turn before or after your action you have to be next to it where you're going to be absorbing crystals from here this is also going to be making this move around here this is going to be giving you special ability you're going to be able to absorb some willpower and sometimes a revelation will happen and the way that's going to work is it's also going to determine whether you can score one of these cards for yourself or score one of the common ones that anybody can score out in the middle of the board and again I'm not going through everything I'm just trying to give you an idea so you're going to be coming in here to get these because you're gonna need to use these to do things you will also have special ones that you can do these can be done the realm abilities can be done from anywhere on the board you don't to be in there but if you're the person controls it you have a benefit so for a little bit cheaper so for example the willow of senses here will allow you to move over one of these tokens by paying a crystal if you eye control that then it's a little bit cheaper for me so having these controls by putting out fortifications putting out the different cards is really important because that's also kind of how a lot of these cards done have the most intense emotion on the board have more adjacent emotions on the board control more opposite realm frontier pairs have more different vibes on emotions have more total intensity from fortresses control more realms it's constantly having more area control on the board I haven't even mentioned yet there's ambition tokens where that players will be putting these ambition tokens here and being able to use those for actions on your turn - so players are essentially just going to keep doing this until the last common aspiration is scored or a team would score a minor a major fragment on their turn but they don't have any remaining in which case then that team so let's say blue is ready to score and they need to put out another major one here and they have all their major ones on the board already so then they just put this on and that's going to end the game of course blue is probably going to win at this point and then you just do final scoring or if someone gets 220 points and that's kind of it again that's kind of a brief overview what you're trying to do is control the different realms in the different areas on the board so that you can score these aspirations and do various other things that will get you points well I don't think you're gonna find anybody who's thinks the artwork for this game is bad this is just great artwork these cars are super high quality there's all kinds I mean look how kind and nice these people look and oh well look at these sludgy looking guys fear and insecurity and disgust and board I mean craving and guilt and hostility and selfishness and pessimism and all that there's there's symbols on these too it shows what it upgrades to this pessimism will upgrade to despair so if I'm upgrading the card I just pull this over here and here's the spare which comes from pessimism and these symbols down here you'll probably have to look a lot of them up in a book but after you play with them for a while you'll get them this is a really cool neat thing the tower the pieces here these crystals work well this board here since there's a little plastic piece that holds it in place and lets it sit on top of that and then just rotate around get it on there properly there you go and it just spins around very easily there's a lot of pieces with the game like I said there's a little moon marker on some of the cards so you can tell which cards are which these are the upgraded cards which is why they have that arrow on them there is a lot of symbology you're not going to be able to figure this out on your own thing but the whole thing does have a really nice look to it and I don't even have the upgraded version I heard that the Kickstarter that there's painted miniatures here you have these standees which are pretty cool I mean they show the artwork and everything and I think they look pretty neat so overall just a really amazing looking game [Music] okay so first very clearly great components amazing the whole orange blue motif the whole thing looks great when we're playing in public people come by like what are you doing and you're like it's inside out the board game which isn't quite true but close enough right people understand the theming of this and kuno and major points for this cool theme like I said they've always done a good job making games about rain clouds raining and and illusionists magicians and an Akron II with time travel now we got this fantastic it is a big giant box and it is a fairly heavy box and again that's something that they've done a lot you know with their past games and there's a lot going on in this game now let's start with a couple things first of all I'm not convinced this is a four player game yes you can play four players in each person controls are only motion has their own deck and you work back and forth but because so much of the game is open this game is really open to this one person saying you should do this this this in on your turn and you're going I want to do that but that is the best move very easily III don't see that the four player game the partnership thing offers anything over a two-player game when I first played a four point game I was like I don't know I played a two-player game and I said oh well this is the way the game was meant to be played it just seems that way yes you could play four player game just like you can play almost any two-player game four player game by giving someone half of it it's not quite the same thing here but definitely felt that way to me the game is one of essentially area control the whole game is about area control there's a bit of a deck building and I love it a hand a management you get these cards but it's about playing the cards out in areas and using your actions to control these different realms and control different regions and there's a lot going on as you control things and because of that you will run into the small problem of placing a card on the board in same way okay that changes this and this when I put this out that changes this and it's not that bad that's not a complaint of mine but that is a little bit of a fiddly ness of moving things around all the time again that theme does come through pretty strongly although I will say that the pessimist guy verse the optimist of the gloom and bliss that didn't really see like the theming of their particular emotions necessarily came through I think that the game is a wide-open game and has a lot of great options and it's well I I can do this and I can do that and I can build my deck I mean really when you start off with it's overwhelming and they're like we recommend you start with these cards you're like thank you as you grasp but that like a drowning man because if you don't you're like what card so I put in my deck and the simple truth is you can do anything you want you can build a really cool deck or at least a deck that you're going to like and I I think that's a good thing and it's but when you first play definitely you just put all the pieces and put everything where they tell you to put them that just makes a lot more sense but as time goes by it gives you an option to branch out and each games gonna feel different because of those emotions and negative things so that's that's very positive there's a lot of cool things there's different currencies going on but here's why in the long run it's not the kind of game that I'm interested in note not saying it's a bad game I'm just saying it's not the kind of game I'm as interested in when a game is big and has a lot of pieces going on I don't mind that I know a lot of people think I'm opposed to big games and tons of pieces but again pointing out that the game that came out directly before this anachronism bigger and has more pieces and I love it so it's not the size of the game or the number of rules where I tend to on a personal level pull back from a game is when there is a ton of rules and there's not even a ton of rules but a lot going on in the and yet it feels like a small payoff if you notice the winning team is the first to get to 20 or 20 ends the game anyway so 20 points is a lot of points and you have these aspirations these common ones and minor ones and it's all about fulfilling that so I'm like I'm doing this and doing that I'm over here we're controlling this I'm playing this card here I'm doing that to control this and we get a point and you say well yeah that's the whole point of the game yeah but for me that just feels a lot of unsatisfying I feel like I moved a lot of pieces and then a whole lot of things for a very small payoff and that's how this game feels to me it feels like the the payoff of excitement is not as strong as the look I put out I put out this coid motion and I'm upgrading this and I moved over here and I took some stuff and I rotated the thing here and I used ambition I did these cool moves and now oh look wow we're scoring and we scored our private ambition yeah and we get to put a piece in the tower and that's all cool and satisfying but doesn't feel like enough for me in an effort to all the work that I have done to get to that point not to mention because there's all these realms and you have five realms and I think there's ten different areas that you're controlling at any given point and then there's you know people themselves are blocking board it feels like you're looking at all this stuff and you're looking at the cards your hand which can be used in multiple ways and I'm thinking about the upgraded cards that I can go to and so there's a lot of stuff a lot of levels and the fun of the game for me doesn't equal those levels I get it I get how the game plays not to mention I would argue that unless you're playing a close game I feel like good 3/4 in you're gonna know who's going to win it's sometimes it's if one team gets ahead and they control some areas it's really hard for you to bust out of those areas or if someone scores two cards and you score none when the aspirations are scored you're like oh okay we're behind and if that happens a couple times in a row it can be hard to dig yourself out of that hole I don't think the game is too long it says two hours two hours seems right I think the theme is great the components are great I think there's a lot of great ideas and the variety is great and I'm not giving this a negative review I'm giving this a mediocre review but mostly for me I realize a lot of people were really going to like this one I would argue if sale feels very strongly like a two-player game and for me and a lot of folks that I played with it felt like there was too many moving parts for it to really bring out that fun I make fun of points out a lot in games where you do this get some points do that and get some points but you know what I feel like in a bigger game I want it I want these little victories I get in this one there was too many I did a whole lot and then I feel like that didn't pay off in the long run but I have to applaud them this is a great work and I really feel like I will probably be at the minority some other people probably agree with me maybe there's too much I think that mine clash probably puts too much in their games they need to shave off more I think as time goes by and I think it shows to me it shows it even more in this one than some of the other ones but what can you say it's not a training in a Mediterranean game I'm very pleased about that you'll probably have to try this one out for yourself but that's what I think about Sarab cerebra the inside world taste our judgment there's a lot going on and there's a lot of neat things in this game there's just maybe a little too much for me [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Dice Tower

Views: 39,002

Keywords: board game, board, game, dice, card game, cards, catan, monopoly, tower, dice tower, vasel, review, tom vasel, vassel, settlers, gaming, GeekUsername: TomVasel, board game review, boardgame, uno, ticket to ride, apples to apples, educational games, educational, top 10, Richard Amann, Viktor Peter, István Pócsi, Frigyes Schőberl, Nick Shaw, Dávid Turczi, Mindclash Games

Id: 727i9OCoaEk

Length: 19min 4sec (1144 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 20 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Sleepy_Chaos]

I’ll obviously reserve judgement until I put my own copy through its paces, but my buzz for this game was tempered a bit after seeing Tom’s thoughts.

Anachrony is one of my favorite games (and Tom’s), and I absolutely love the unique theme of Cerebria, but it seems the game is loaded with too much weight and too little payoff.

If a game with an awesome theme can’t deliver a true sense of fun, how will it ever make it to the table over other proven titles?

[u/LordMotas]

Having played the game quite a few times on Tabletopia (solo, co-op, and competitive modes) since it was added there, I can tell you all a few of my thoughts on the review (and the negatives that he provided):

1) 4-Player game feels like 2-Player game:

I'm not entirely sure how he came to this conclusion for a number of reasons. First off, resources are NOT shared (except for Ambition) by the players, so you'd have to micromanage not only what they should do on their turn, but also take into account costs for doing so since each Spirit has their own pool of Essence, Willpower, and Emotion cards. Secondly, as you upgrade your Spirits, you are pushing towards a more asymmetric role on your team (i.e. being better at invoking/quelling or movement/fortifying). Eventually you'll have the power to do some things that your ally cannot do (especially with the asymmetric sides of the boards), or you'll be able to do it much better than them.

I would hope that these two things would make it so that your ally cannot possibly keep track of what you can do vs what they can do and allow you to make your own choices (similar to the way Spirit Island avoids quarterbacking by making every player incredibly unique) as the game progresses.

On that note, Tom made it sound like you have 5 actions you can do on your turn plus the Absorb action, when (and this is one of my only gripes with the review is that he completely glossed over this part) you actually have the 5 basic Spirit actions AND 5 Realm actions. So this means you have 10 different actions you can take in addition to the Absorb ability that you'll want to use each turn. With that in mind, I have found that I barely have enough time to think about what I'm going to do on my turn given that there are 10 different actions and I only get to choose 3 of them on my turn (plus the absorb action) in addition to the upgrading of the base 5 actions at any given time if I'm willing to give up precious Emotion cards from my hand.

Regardless of what the game had done to attempt to mitigate this issue, this isn't a game specific issue. It depends on the player...I'm sure some people will try to dictate the optimal moves of their teammates regardless of the game because they want to win. I personally think that there's enough variety and choices to make on your turn to dissuade you from taking your ally's turn for them (ala Pandemic). I've played the co-op version of the game and never saw the need to tell my ally what to do on their turn. But maybe that's just me.

2) Do a lot of stuff for a small payoff:

I have never felt this while playing Cerebria. When Tom was explaining things, it sounded like he said that you do a ton of things, trigger a Revelation, and score 1 point. (probably a technicality, but...) Scoring the fragments is a HUGE part of the end game scoring. Cerebria was originally based on only scoring fragments in the Identity, so the game could largely be determined based solely on that. So they added the Intentions to add smaller point values here and there to give the players payoff for doing the smaller things if they weren't making progress towards the larger Aspirations. You either get small payoffs throughout the game and the large one at the end, or you only get one at the end, take your pick.

The whole point of the game is to do smaller turns to build up to a state where you can make an insance swing turn that changes the control of the board into your favor. Whenever these plays are made it feels so good to be able to look a the board and think "Before this turn, my opponent controlled a ton of frontiers and Realms, but I was able to take all of those back, trigger a Revelation, score a Major Fragment, AND I'm well on my way to achieve the next Common Aspiration." The game is all about momentum and this is one of my favorite parts of it.

On that note, I'll go to the last point that I'll call a "negative"

3) It's obvious who will win about 3/4 into the game:

On the contrary, I have never felt this in the games that we've played. To quote a user in the YouTube commens section who brings up a very good point:

How did you feel that the game didn't let you catch up as you fell behind? Every scoring round, if your opponent scores a Major Fragment, you get to remove a Common Aspiration from the game, so if you see that your opponent is TOTALLY going to win the next one easily, you can knock it right out of the game so they can't just score it for easy points. Not only that, if your team scores no Fragments during a scoring round, you get to pick your next Aspiration from the top three on your deck, making it much more likely that you'll be able to score a Fragment next time. This mechanism works great, and there have been so many times that I felt like there was no way I was in the lead but managed to come back and win the whole thing. I didn't see this discussed in your overview of the game rules; did you happen to miss this part in your gameplays? : /

Cerebria has a bunch of catch-up mechanics to help the losing team come back into the game. Another thing that he missed is the real threat and power that lies in putting up fortresses onto the Identity. Whenever I've been behind (by a major fragment and 2-3 minor fragments) I've been able to add 1-2 fortresses to the Identity with careful planning and it puts the team back into the game.

Conclusion:

All in all, there is a lot to the game and it almost felt like Tom was just trying to spit out everything that's in the rules and, as a result, it sounded unnecessarily complicated and not smooth at all. When in fact, the game feels quite the opposite once you've got a firm handle on the rules. If you actually know the rules and listen to how Tom explains it, there's almost no cohesion to the explanation. It's like the guy who explains a game to you, and then over and over throughout the rules explanation says "Oh yeah, there's also this thing. There's this thing also that can happen. Also a niche situation where this happens." At it disorients the players intently trying to learn the game.

I've played Cerebria 5 or so times and I'd love to answer any/all questions anyone may have. Area Control is my favorite genre of game and this game immediately shot into my top 10 after playing even through the clunky interface of Tabletopia. This game is everything I've ever wanted in an Area Control game, so I may be a tad biased.

Also, for what it's worth. I'm not a backer on KS for this game.

TL;DR: Get back up there and read this if you'd like to hear detailed thoughts on the negatives that Tom expressed during the review.

[u/ZoalPrime]

I’ve played a few times on tabletopia since they updated to the final version of the game. I love it. I think it’s my favorite mind clash game. I disagree with Tom on most points here especially that the theme doesn’t come through in the gameplay. If you play with the B-side boards each spirit absolutely marries theme with mechanics. The light deck building aspect intrigues me. I also think the mechanics on how to generate and use the special team resources make this a very interesting team game and not just a 1v1 game.

[u/Tharok]

I'm not a backer myself but I do enjoy Anachrony a lot. After this review I'm kind of pumped to try the game if I get the chance because most of his negatives I don't really mind, since I play often 2 players and I don't mind having to do a lot of work for a single point, I guess I relate the payoff to the % it gets me toward victory.

The one thing that he noted that might be worrying is that you know someone is going to win too early compared to when the game's gonna end, but if the 2 player duration of the whole game can be brought to 60-75 minutes I can live with that, so overall a useful review for me, despite it being lukewarm at best.

[u/[deleted]]

So much criticism for Tom giving his opinion on a game he reviewed. How dare he!

[u/[deleted]]

I wouldn't take it to heart. I find Tom's criticisms stretch only as far as his personal opinions on whether he liked the game or not. He's not particularly good at critiquing the game beyond that. You might love the game!

[u/Rachelisapoopy]

Seems like a fairly cool game. I wonder if my lgs has a copy to try out.

In general, while I like to hear Tom's opinion on games, it isn't very useful to me due to our tastes being so different (my tastes are much closer to rhado but I can't stand watching his videos). You gotta just try the game yourself and see how you feel after a couple of games.

[u/ants_cymru]

I played this game at a con in june. I cannot see why you would not want to run it without 4 players if able.

Team games are a rarity and this one is a gem.

Edit: Im not a KS backer but gladly my friend is picking this up at retail.