I will admit that as a reviewer, there are quite a few games that I play just enough times to analyze them, and then forget about them. It’s a shame, but it’s true. But every once in a while, a favourite game will emerge. My absolute favourite game, in terms of the number of times it’s been replayed, would have to be Newfoundland Jam, a wonderfully goofy, incredibly Canadian set collection game by Jason Anarchy Games. That’s why I was so excited to learn that the same company had created a new game with almost identical rules but with a completely different theme. The fact that the setup, goals and gameplay were already familiar meant that we could avoid that awkward “am I doing this right?” stage that seems to come with every new game. As the folks on TicTok like to say, we were able to “skip to the good part”.
In Newfoundland Jam, you combine obscure fruits and amusingly renamed kitchen tools to fulfill recipes. Your Friend Is Sad takes things in a different direction. Based on Shen Comix, and featuring guest art from dozens of other webcomic artists, this game replaces recipes with activities, tools with “brain goop” and food with feelings, with the goal of making your Sad Friend happy again. The other big difference in this game is the addition of Life Cards. If you are familiar with Shen Comix, or at least the memes that have been made from them, you should know Life. Life is the big bully whose role it is to keep the main character just out of reach of success and happiness. The Life Cards sort of reflect that. In most cases, a Life card will allow you to perform an action that will benefit you, at a cost to the other players. For example “collect Red Brain Goop from all other players” or “trade any two completed Cheer Ups between players”. Occasionally though, you will get a Life Card that straight up requires you to do something, immediately. It isn’t always a bad thing, but it will change the game. For example “Play immediately. The player to your right may look at your hand and take one card”; “Play immediately. Going clockwise all players take a random card from your hand” or “Play immediately. Draw a secret Cheer Up that only you can complete”.
Set up and gameplay is pretty straightforward, especially if you’ve played Newfoundland Jam before. The setup consists of 4 Cheer Up Cards and 4 Brain Cards, with each player being dealt a hand of 5 Brain Cards. Brain Cards are either Brain Goop, which is sorted by colour (Red, Pink, Green, Blue and Purple); or Feelings, which are sorted by theme (Determination, Affection, Nostalgia, Mindfulness, Inspiration and Rested). There are also two different types of wildcards. A Vibe Bot can replace any Feeling, and Rainbow Goop can replace any specific colour Brain Goop. Finally, there are three special cards in the Brain Deck. There are 2 different “Life Happens” Cards that you can play during your turn to draw 2 Life Cards. There is also one “Brain Storm” Card; when this card appears you must immediately Discard either all 4 Cheer Ups on the board or all 4 Brain Cards.
The starting player is whoever most recently attempted to cheer someone up. A single turn consists of 5 stages. In “Stop to Think”, you discard one Brain Card from the board and replace it with the top card from the Brain Deck. In “Better Yourself” you have two options; you can either take two cards from the top of the Brain Deck or exchange one card in your hand with a Brain Card on the Table. BUT, if you trade cards, you must also draw one Life Card from the top of the Life Deck. The “Get a Life” stage is optional; you can discard one Feeling Card (but not a Brain Goop Card) from your hand to draw one Life Card, or discard a Life Happens Card to draw 2 Brain Cards. You can also use a Life Card at any time on your turn. Life Cards are discarded as soon as they are activated unless they specifically say “Keep this card for the whole game”. The second optional action is Complete a Cheer. If you have all of the Brain Card components required for a Cheer Up, you must display them for the other players to see, claim the Cheer Card, and discard the Brain Cards. If you have enough of the right Brain Cards, you can claim more than one Cheer Up in a single turn. The final action is Pass the Sad, where you hand the Active Player token clockwise to the next player.
If at any time a player has more than 10 Brain Cards in their hand, they have two choices. You can either “Clear your head” by discarding your entire hand and drawing a new hand of 5 cards. Or you can “Overshare”, laying all of your cards on the table, where all players can trade them during the Better Yourself stage. The cards remain on the table until there are less than 10, at which time you can pick them up as a normal hand again.
Unlike Newfoundland Jam, Your Friend Is Sad has 2 different win conditions. You win the game if you collect Cheer Up whose point value adds up to 13 or more. You can also win by “Sorting the Sadness”. Each Cheer Up card has a category of sadness: Gloomy, Melancholy, Feeling Blue and Downcast. If you have 3 Cheer Up Cards of the same category, regardless of their point value, you win.
In case you are worried that this game deliberately makes fun of the serious topic of Mental Health, let me reassure you. The game designers consulted with a Clinical Psychologist (Doctor R. Boccamazzo aka “Doctor B”) during the creation of the game. There is also a full page in the rule book in which Doctor B explains the differences between everyday sadness and Major Depression, outlines some warning signs to look for, and suggests some resources available if you need them, including the websites Takethis.org and Nami.org.
I really enjoy playing this game, even though there are some things I would do to improve it. What elevates the game from a simple set collection, in my opinion, would have to be the Life Cards. They add a bit of strategy, but also a touch of randomness; chaotic, without being annoying. I do wish, though, that the Life Cards hadn’t been a different size from the Brain Cards. It’s just a minor complaint, but it does make it a bit harder to hold them in your hand together. The one thing that I have mixed feelings about is the artwork. All of the artists did an amazing job creating all the Cheer Up and Life Card images. They are fun and relatable; some of them just made me laugh out loud. (My personal favourite is “Play a Card Game”, which just has the Sad Friend pointing out of the card at you, the player.) But when it comes to the Brain Card images, that’s where we get into some problems. I don’t know if it was just me, but I found that the Pink Brain Goop and Red Brain Goop were almost the same colour at first glance. Luckily, each of the brains also has a different facial expression, which helped a little. The faces on the Feeling Cards are cute and at first glance, seem to be suitably iconic, in the “computer icon” sense of the word. But things get a little bit awkward when those images get shrunk down to be put on the Cheer Up Cards. At first glance, It was hard sometimes to tell the difference between the “Determination” and “Mindfulness” icons. I often found myself picking up Cheer Cards to look at them more closely. Also, some of the images just got weird when they became smaller. The exclamation point over “Inspiration” suddenly looked like a big red straw poking into his head. And while the puppy dog in “Affection” is cute at full size, I still laugh when I think about my friend asking “why is there a poop emoji next to the guy’s face?” at icon size. I’m not saying that this ruined the game, or made it unplayable, but it would be something I’d like to see tweaked a little if there was ever a second edition made.
This is a fun game to play, without being disrespectful of a serious subject. It’s highly relatable for everyone who has been through the last few years. The artwork is cute and I am still trying to identify which card came from which guest artist. If you like Jason Anarchy Games, or you like Webcomics, or you’re just feeling a little bit sad, I would highly recommend Your Friend Is Sad.
Shen Comix can be found on Facebook at facebook.com/shencomix and you can find Jason Anarchy Games online at www.DrinkingQuest.com or on their facebook page, facebook.com/DrinkingQuest.
