Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
Out of Sorts is now the second memory game I’ve played in the last few years that isn’t really a memory game at all. Like Wilmot’s Warehouse, which uses the façade of memorization to trick players into collaborating on a story, the memorization in Out of Sorts is a distraction, a means to an end rather than the end itself. Do you want to spend twenty or thirty minutes memorizing the order of numerous abstract symbols? No, of course you don’t. That sounds awful. Do you want to spend twenty or thirty minutes in passionate debate with your friends about how a set of abstract symbols relate to one another based on three arbitrary criteria, to argue about whether and why that set of squiggles with a line through it feels more like a Reptile than it does Travel? Of course you do. That sounds joyous, and it is.
Out of Sorts is a cooperative game in which players work together to organize an alien’s library. The lot of you have been abducted for the purpose by this seafoam green monstrosity, who sits in a chair reading while you do all the work. The alien starts out not paying much attention to you at all, and hopefully things stay that way. You have reason to believe you are not the first people to have been given this task, and the most concrete evidence of human librarians past are the fingernail marks leading towards the airlock. No pressure.
There are two matching decks full of abstract cards. One deck is the Index, used only to reference the actual Books that make up the other deck. The Books are dealt out to all but one of the players, the individual who has been chosen to go up on the ladder and shelve. This only makes sense; it’s hard to hold that many books and keep your balance. Each real-time round starts with players drawing from the Index and describing the desired Book. This is already an invitation to a good time. “It’s got…three S’s with a period in the middle.” “It’s an inebriated snowman.” “It’s like an eyeball that’s rolled around on a dirty carpet.”
Once the five Books for that round have been located, all the players, including the player up on the ladder, discuss how to arrange them based on three categories that were chosen at the start of the game. Let’s say our categories were Math, Reptiles, and Travel. “Well, there are three S’s, so I think we could start making a number line and have that as the 3.” “You travel during winter vacation.” “The eyeball shape could be an egg?”
At the beginning of the game, this part is easy. You only have five Books to sort, and you can see all of them. But then those five books get handed up the ladder, where the vertiginous player holds onto them for the rest of the game. Then you reveal five more Books, and do it again, but those five Books are getting shelved betwixt and among the previous five Books, and so on and so forth. Every few rounds you have to perform a check, to see how well you remember your own system. A random assortment of Indexes for Books you’ve already arranged is dealt out, and the players who haven’t gone up the ladder are tasked with correctly arranging them to match the order of the Books up on the shelves.
If you make a mistake, the alien starts to pay more attention, the disapprobation evident on its face. The alien’s interest is tracked by an illustration of the alien sitting in a chair, covered with a Book Token. Each time you mess up, the book gets lowered one notch to reveal more of the alien’s face. It is not pleased to be interrupted. Can’t you please just do this correctly? I have yet to see this component fail to get a delighted response. It’s the little things.
The goal of the game is to organize the entire library and to remember where you have put everything without running out of time. Like Wilmot’s, the memorization quickly becomes incidental and easy. By the end of a game, you’ll find yourself able to effortlessly remember the order of the entire deck. I’m starting to think that my inability to remember phone numbers may be about a lack of interest in doing so…
The magic comes from the conversations around the memorization. It isn’t about recalling the order. That’s designer Connor Wake’s trick for gamifying this experience, to give it some structure. The joy of Out of Sorts is in discussion and disagreement, in figuring out the vagaries that form around the edges of a strict and simplistic system of organization. Not every card is going to suggest Math, Reptiles, or Travel. You start making absurd and yet entirely sensible adjustments. “No, wait, that doesn’t go there, that’s the cosmic space lizard, remember?” You will have to be flexible to fill in the gaps. And you’d better, or it’s the airlock for you.
