Rorschach Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Rorschach, a party game published by Pegasus Spiel. In Rorschach, the game is divided into two teams and players will need to guess which word goes with which ink blot.

In 1921, Hermann Rorschach wrote Psychodiagnostik outlining his studies on mental patients and how they responded to being shown 10 meaningless inkblots. While these days we associate the Rorschach test with Internet personality quizzes or board games they were initially developed to diagnose serious mental illness.

Even to this day how effective of a tool they are is up for debate in professional psychiatry. Luckily for all of us, I’m very much untrained when it comes to psychiatry but I am here to tell you if it’s a fun way to spend some time with your friends.

Rorschach is a party-ish game in the same vein as the ever-popular Codenames. The round begins by drawing inkblot cards from the deck. One player on the active team (which the rules refer to as the test team) will then draw three word cards. They will secretly pair each word to each inkblot.

Then the remaining players on the test team will try to guess any of the matches correctly. After choosing, but before the test subject reveals if it is correct, the other team (the control team) can either agree or disagree.

Then… consult the flow chart. If the test team is right and the control team is wrong, the test team gets the point. If the test team is wrong and the control team is right, the control team gets a point. If both teams are right or wrong no one gets the point. And finally, if the test team is correct (regardless of the control team’s result) they get to guess a second match.

On the second attempt, the control team doesn’t guess. And the test team gets the point if it’s right