Perhaps the most appreciable thing about Xoe Allred’s work is that it’s so very human. Yes, even when we’re talking about dinosaurs who would rather play board games than face their impending extinction in Velocirapture, and certainly when considering the desperate correspondents of Persuasion.

Take Vibes. Vibes is about being a teacher who wants what’s best for their students, even when they’re obnoxious goofballs who disrupt your efforts to bring something good into their lives. I can confirm that it’s about as accurate as it gets, teacher-wise, even in those moments when I wish it had gone a few steps further.

Check out these cool kids.

It begins with a hand of students, five in total per player, each identified by a suit and a hand-drawn illustration that’s the spitting image of something a bored student would doodle on the back of their notebook. Like the rest of Allred’s games, the rules themselves are straightforward, although the ways Vibes steps apart from the norm may require an acquainting play or two before everything snaps into place.

The first and perhaps foremost departure is that Vibes is a multi-victor game — an uncommon mode if we’re talking mainstream but familiar to Allred’s efforts elsewhere. Like its previous titles, “winning” is a cluttered notion. The theory is that everybody at the table can win, provided they arrange a table of students so that their symbols either all match or are all distinct. Similarly, it’s possible for everybody to lose, producing mismatched groups that don’t quite, dare I say it, vibe. More often, some of the table will succeed while others won’t. It’s a gentle experience, fifteen minutes if that. The stakes have never been lower. That’s also part of the appeal. One presumes that a mismatched table will be rearranged tomorrow.

Adding to its gentle sensibilities is a freewheeling sense of play that I wish other games would lean into more often. There is no turn order in the regular sense. Instead, turns are assigned popcorn-style, players picking with whom they will swap a card, at which point their target gets to choose, and so on, until the requisite number of bells have sounded and class begins. It’s a small touch but a mighty one, calling to mind a classroom exercise, students perched atop their desks and clapping at one another as they shout out answers, and Allred instills these decisions with little incentives to prevent anybody from getting left out. Unless, that is, they want to get left out.

Hey, I want a goofball too!

Naturally — or maybe unnaturally, given our hobby’s tendency to produce bizarre homunculi that wear settings like ill-fitting skinsuits — the most appealing thing about Vibes is that it captures the sometimes-warm, sometimes-stilted relationship between educators and pupils. At times, picking somebody to swap cards with is as easy as making eye contact and knowing, truly knowing, that you are both holding what the other person needs. In other instances, everybody will stare at one another, gradually realizing nobody wants to be called on, the quiet stretching on a few seconds longer than is strictly comfortable. There’s the heart-skipping apprehension of being picked when you would really rather not, your arrangement of students already perfect — in game terms, the answer in your head perfectly formulated to the question the teacher asked five minutes ago rather than the one they’re asking right this instant. Sometimes there is discussion, other times the room is disquieted with a rebellious streak, a determination to avoid collaboration. It is, in other words, very much like a classroom.

In all respects but one, that is. It might be a little too normie of me to want the students to be more distinct, to have personality traits that establish them as individuals rather than suits. Look at me, wishlisting character abilities! But, first of all, a small minority of them are marked this way. There are a few precious wildcards in the deck, “goofballs” in the game’s parlance, who function as any suit and therefore establish themselves as desirable picks for any table. Secondly, Allred’s Persuasion once again comes to mind, with its wellspring of personality printed on every single card.

Regardless, that’s where Vibes lands. Playing the game, I recall the times that I, as a teacher, have put certain students together, “randomly” drawing up groups for projects or discussion, except of course the drawings were rigged tighter than any banana republic’s ballot box. I’m proud to say that these pairings have produced friendships, collaborations, and maybe one or two flings. The entire time I’ve been behind the scenes, cackling at my power. Mwahaha. Be friends. Have interesting conversations. Smooch.

In all cases, though, those students were slightly more distinct than suits. Vibes captures the first half of such arrangements, the warmth and care a good teacher can exhibit, the uncertainty of group work, the vagueness of “winning” in such a setting. I just wish it had gone further in characterizing its cards. Its kids.

Tag yourself. I’m the cyclopean monster who refuses to leave bed.

But if Vibes excels at anything, it’s found in the above-the-table dynamics it engenders. More and more, I appreciate games that are, to borrow a term from the recent trend in novel-writing, cozy. This is one such game. It has the game-taste of sun-warmed buttermilk, bringing to mind the best classes, the best teachers, the future laid out in front of you like a horizon.

A complimentary copy of Vibes was provided by the designer.

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