Sanity Test for The MediuM

This concisely sets the mental paradigm and expectations for the game experience. Well done.

Listed.

Connects to the MacLuhans, and honors the design team up front in a visually appealing way. It marries the format of a game rulebook with that of an academic paper. Well done.

The Game Description, leading into the Objective, gently leads into the Maelstrom concept of the board. It is a nice response to your previous Sanity Test.

60 cards is not a lot for a guessing game. This will limit your replayability among a particular group. It is sufficient for a classroom or small group learning situation where you play to learn the concept, then move on.

Only one problem: you have spoiled one of the 60 cards with this illustration.

--I can only guess at this point that the Maelstrom referenced is the pile of cards in the center of the board. At this point, I don't see how that could happen or how bad that is. (Note: I have a much better appreciation of the Maelstrom concept after reading the entire book - but remember that a new learner will not have that advantage.)

--You detail a perfectly acceptable way to select a starting team - but again, you have spoiled 2-4 of the cards by doing so. Given that the cards are such a limited resource, can you come up with a selection process that does not reveal content? (One idea: the team member whose birthday is closest to Marshall McLuhan's belongs to the starting team.)

Not needed.

Overall this makes sense, but some concreteness is missing:

--If you are on the start space and roll the whirlpool face, what happens? Not specified.

--Why move counterclockwise to the next law? Since your turn order is clockwise, this could lead to confusion.

--Consider putting point 4 of "How to Play" and the green-boxed note BEFORE the Example italicized text. Reading the example, before completely understanding the process, is confusing.

--I would recommend you consider removing the Whirlpool space from the board. It does nothing but cause a sense of pointless loss.

--I did not see your prior rulebook, but this wording feels tighter.

The illustrations of the Tetradic space, the Whirlpool space, and the Wildcard are sufficient.

As stated last Sanity Test:

"The victory condition should be briefly recapped in its own section at the end; that makes it easy for players to find and is a clear signal that they have reached the end of the main rules."

This is a well-constructed, streamlined teaching and playing experience.

There is an unfortunate malapropism on page 8: You named of of McLuhan's books "The Medium is the Massage" instead of "The Medium is the Message."

Very clean and professional-looking without being intimidating.

Very well laid out. The sentence "This game gamifies Laws of Media" is unfortunate and self-referential. Consider the alternative "This is a gaming experience of McLuhan's book The Laws of Media".

The second one-sentence paragraph is a fragment.

The word "randomly" in paragraph three is redundant and awkward. (Have you ever tried to non-randomly draw from a pile of face-down cards?) Try this alternative text: "Each round, one team member tries to get their team to guess the medium on the card. Clues take the form of answers to the four questions of The Laws of Media. Teams move along the board when a medium is guessed correctly, pulling themselves out of the Maelstrom."

Striking and clean.

Again, Striking and clean.

The additional action shots are very good (especially the one of people playing the game). However, the cards shown reveal about 10 percent of the content of the game!

See notes above under "Ad".

There is no video. (Frankly, I am not sure one is needed - a short trailer about McLuhan and the mechanics of the game would be sufficient.)