WHEN I DREAM (Repos Productions)
As you rub the sleep from your eyes small parts of that night’s dream start to come back to you. A Skeleton took you from a Wreck… and then fed you a Hamburger before turning into a Vampire and vanishing in the Sky? That couldn’t be right, but as you try to remember more details the edges become blurry as your mind shifts to wakefulness. These strange half-memories are the setting of When I Dream.
Much like every day existence, When I Dream is divided into Night and Day. During the Night, the Dreamer shuffles the Dream Spirit cards (made up of a number of Fairy, Boogeyman and Sandman cards determined by the number of players) and deals a card to everyone beside themselves. Players then secretly look at their Dream Spirit cards to know their role for that Night – Fairies try to help the Dreamer correctly guess the Dream card, Boogeymen try to trick the Dreamer, and Sandmen try to maintain a balance of correct and incorrect guesses. The Dreamer then puts on the Sleep Mask, the timer is flipped and a new Dream card with a picture and word is revealed from the deck. Starting with the player to the left of the Dreamer, players offer one word clues to try to get the Dreamer to guess. Correct guesses are placed on the Yellow side and incorrect guesses are placed on the Blue side. After the sand timer’s two-minutes are up, the night is over and no more clues are given.

The Day phase begins with the Dreamer trying to recount all of the words guessed from their Dream cards, either as a list or in the story of a confusing dream for fun, scoring a point for each correct one.
After removing the Sleep Mask, points are added for the other players. Fairies score a point for every Dream card on the Yellow side, Boogeymen score a point for every Dream card on the Blue side, and Sandmen score the smaller number of Dream cards if there is a difference between the sides of two or more, the larger number of Dream cards if the difference is only one, and if the Dream cards are equal they score that number plus two more.
A new Night then starts with passing the Sleep Mask to the left. After each player has had a turn at being the Dreamer, the game is over and whoever has the most points wins!
Modern games are exciting in that they explore lots of new territory by reaching parts of the brain not strained in the past. Memory, creativity, cunningness, helpfulness, knowing when to be cunning and helpful to balance the guesses but not wholly discredit your clues to the Dreamer – it’s a lot of fun and surprisingly challenging.
With great illustrations reminiscent of Mysterium, a double-sided and reversible Dream card deck allows for countless games before the words could ever start becoming too familiar. The components also add to the theme with a plastic bed frame serving as a holder for the Dream card deck and a comfy Sleep Mask to blindfold the Dreamer. Party games like When I Dream are taking the style into creative and wonderfully fun places. (Repos Productions) by David C. Obenour