Medium Review – A Game of Mind Meld Challenges

Find the nearest person, regardless of what they’re doing, and stare into their eyes. What are they thinking about? Probably, they’re annoyed. But they might not be. Instead, they might be thinking of their next holiday, or whether or not they should have eaten that wheel of cheese. In Medium, it’s up to you to guess their thoughts.

Mechanically, Medium has you start by partnering with another player.

For this example, I’ll use you and me.

First, I’ll start the round by playing the card ‘banana’. Then you’ll look through your hand of word cards and choose to play the ‘ice cream’ card. We’ll then spend a few seconds staring into each other’s eyes, and entwine our souls together like we were making the music video to Ulay, Oh.

When we’re ready we’ll count down from three and say one word connecting the two cards. If we both say ‘banana split’ then we’ll drown in points. The more likely scenario though, is one person says ‘fruit-flavoured ice cream’ and the other says ‘banana sundae’. In which case we get no points, and only two more chances left to guess correctly.

However, with these second and third tries instead of using the original words ‘banana’ and ‘ice cream’ we’d instead use the words we just guessed. So while you might start with wildly different ideas, over the course of three guesses, you should be funnelling your thoughts closer together.

Fun in small doses if that

Medium isn’t an original idea. It’s based on an old improv activity called mind meld. This goes a long way to show the people who would be interested in such a game.

Being horrible at improv, and not being in tune with my fellow man. Medium was incredibly tough to get any points at all. It took a long time for my group to get their first correct guess. That when it happened, we all jumped for joy.

Although that moment was a great experience, it was a journey filled with bad guesses to get there. Which didn’t make for a great party game, or game in general.

Medium relies on the novelty of these connections happening more often enough to fuel the game-play loop. However for my group, these connections never came, or when they did they were met with exhausted smiles and rolling eyes. Rather than the enthusiasm you get from other party games like Just One, or So Clover.

However, it has its merits as an icebreaker activity. Since Medium is so sanitized and inoffensive, you’re able to play with anyone in any environment. Making it a great team-building activity in a work environment, or something to do with super strict grandparents.

Mystery, mysticism and misery

Even though I ended up disliking Medium, I need to call out Sarah Kelly who did an amazing job on the artwork and graphic design. Capturing both the mystery and mysticism of a séance with the deep blue and purple colour palette. It elevates a mediocre game, and I’ll be looking out for more of her work in the future.

Otherwise, while there is fun to be had with Medium, it is limited in what it can offer. Based on the fact that’s a repacked improv game, should tell you all you need to know if it’s a game for you. Otherwise, when it comes to games where you need to guess another player’s thoughts my recommendation goes to Mysterium Park.