There are certain things a solo game can do if it wants to be something more than a niche form of Solitaire and Onirim does none of them. What’s weird about this is that it almost feels intentional, as if the central design goal of Onirim WAS to create a niche form of Solitaire. I suppose in that sense the game is somewhat ambitious. Without the reactive social force of other human minds to contend with much of the allure of tabletop gaming is lost, so to design within such disadvantageous boundaries is sure to bring up some difficult, yet interesting problems. Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because interesting problems can yield very interesting solutions. For example, games like Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, The 7th Continent, and Mage Knight Board Game all work quite well solo. And though these games have almost no mechanical similarities, each is a mentally stimulating and thematically expressive experience in its own way. A good multiplayer game’s tension and intrigue typically manifest as natural results of its system handling goal-oriented inputs from several minds in opposition. So how could a solo game possibly hope to accomplish something along the same lines? By driving the player as deep into their own mind as possible so they start having similar conflicts take place inside their own brain. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective has nearly impossible mysteries to solve. The 7th Continent has a truly massive island to explore. Mage Knight Board Game‘s turn-by-turn hand-management is unbelievably rich with options. Each of these approaches ensures a constant state of tension inside the player’s mind due to the nearly constant internal conflicts they evoke. So what does Onirim do to accomplish this? Uh… well… hmm… you sure have to shuffle cards a lot!
Onirim is a simple hand-management/set collection game where the player’s goal is to find 8 colored doors hidden in a deck of shuffled cards. In addition to the “Door” cards there are many “Location” cards of the same colors that have one of three different symbols on them: Sun, Moon, or Key. There are also “Nightmare” cards that do bad things if you draw them. To play the game, the player selects cards one at a time from their hand of 5 and adds them to a single continuous row, drawing from the deck after each play. Thematically, the draw deck represent a labyrinth you are exploring and the row your path through that labyrinth. Cute. There is only one rule regarding which cards you play: two Locations with the same symbol cannot be added to the row back to back. If you can’t or don’t want to play any of your cards you can discard one instead. If you discard a “Key” location, you get to look at the top 5 cards of the draw deck, remove one, and rearrange the rest as you wish. As for the Door cards, there are two ways to earn them: one is by playing three Location cards of the same color in a row, and the other is by drawing a Door card when you happen to have a “Key” location of the matching color in your hand. Anytime you draw a “Nightmare” you are penalized. Mercifully, the game lets you choose one of four penalties: 1) discarding a “Key” location, 2) losing one of your previously unlocked doors, 3) discarding the top 5 cards from the draw stack, or 4) discarding your entire hand. There is a simple reason why all of these are bad: if the draw deck runs out before you collect all 8 doors, you LOSE the game.
The game’s art is quite nice, dreamy and childlike just as its theme would suggest. I’d even call it eye-catching (it caught mine, after all). Unfortunately, pretty cards alone do not a good game make. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with Onirim, as much as there’s just not anything to it at all. This is the kind of game you can beat 5 times in a row while binge-watching Seinfeld for the 30th time. There’s a certain appeal to that kinda thing, sure, but it’s an appeal that a standard deck of cards provides hundreds of solutions for. In comparison, Onirim and its seven mini-expansions seem kinda pointless, no? If it’s about the art say what you will, but I’ve always found the classic Jack/Queen/King illustrations to be quite attractive. Mechanically, if Onirim was a paragon of elegance perhaps I’d be more willing to make room for it, but it’s not. In fact, I find it rather clumsy. The game’s two separate discard piles (one for doors and nightmares to get shuffled back into the deck, the other for locations removed from the game) and frequent penalties are simple enough to keep track of sure, but when the game is moving at speed its really easy to get lost in the moment. I suspect the main reason for this is that the game is just hard to pay attention to because it’s so darn easy. I’ve played the vanilla game around 15 times and lost maybe once. It does get harder when you add in expansions, but it also gets to be way more of a pain in the neck. Which it kinda already is even without them, mainly due to all the card shuffling. I cannot emphasize enough how much shuffling you have to do in this game. It’s ridiculous. Practically constant. Find a door, shuffle the deck. Discard a door, shuffle the deck. Discard a nightmare, shuffle the deck. It’s crazy. My last few games I just kept the deck in my hand the entire time. It gets old. Most standard deck games I’ve played don’t have this issue, so Onirim is actually introducing new problems to the solitaire experience. I suppose that’s an accomplishment of sorts.
Technically, Onirim has a co-operative mode but it’s barely worth mentioning. You and your partner each need to find four of the eight doors, your hand sizes are 3 instead of 5, and there are two shared cards. Table talk rules are basically “do what thou wilt” without even the slightest recommendation on how best to play the game, which is never a good sign. Beyond that, there’s nothing to say. It’s exactly the same game, and almost literally “multiplayer solitaire” (you know, that term silly people use to criticize good games that aren’t about murdering your opponent’s toy soldiers). Pass.
I don’t know what was considered impressive enough about Onirim to be worth publishing. The games I listed at the beginning of this review are all massively better examples of what solo gaming should be, and it’s important to note that every single one of them works just as well or even better with multiple players. To ignore the social component of tabletop gaming is a mistake, plain and simple. Solo modes can be wonderful ways to learn complex games or rack up the play count on some favorites, but as the sole attraction it just doesn’t make sense (with some very rare exceptions). I have a backlog of like 50 single-player video games I’d have to clear before I could consider getting seriously into single-player board games. Even then, I’d probably just read a book. Plenty of classics out there, and I only got this one life, ya dig? Even if, for whatever reason, I was averse to the transcendent immersion of electronic games and psychological pageantry of the grand novel, I would still find it hard to see the value in games like Onirim. For if I were such a passionless shell with no interest in the souls of others and the heights of modern art, I don’t know what void in me such games could fill. Maybe though, just maybe, I’d buy a nice deck of playing cards. But probably only if I was expecting company.
Onirim gets a rating of TWO out of FIVE, indicating it is NOT RECOMMENDED.