Eldritch Horror co-creator’s new game is the questionably-titled Voices In My Head
It's also received criticism for its artwork.
Corey Konieczka, co-creator of Eldritch Horror, has unveiled the title, artwork and concept of their latest game.
Entitled Voices In My Head, the upcoming board game sees players becoming different aspects of a person’s personality as they stand trial and attempt to avoid conviction.
Despite the game’s novel concept, with players taking control of the various elements of the defendant’s brain and pushing the aspect of their hidden personality, the title is - perhaps not intentionally - a reference to an insensitive phrase that has previously been used to describe people with mental illness.
The artwork for Voices in My Head has also received criticism on Twitter the game’s artwork, for having its only Asian character wear a qipao or cheongsam, a dress made popular in China during the 1920s and ‘30s, despite the tabletop title appearing to be otherwise set in the modern day.
The players in Voices In My Head can choose to take on the role of prosecutor or as one of the defendant’s personas, with the prosecutor being certain that the defendant is guilty and determined to prove it. Each round, the prosecutor draws a trial card that lays out the current narrative of the game, such as the calling of witnesses or the presentation of evidence. The prosecutor’s aim each round is to sway the jury to their side or cause the defendant to trip up and confess to the crime they’re standing trial for.
In the meantime, the players controlling the defendant’s personas will decide which aspect of their brain they want to manage, from motor skills to speech. Each player controlling a persona then decides whether their aspect of the defendant’s brain will be the one to respond to the question presented by the prosecution and, if so, how they’ll respond. With the players each holding a secret personality card affecting how they want the defendant to respond, players will need to collectively determine whether the defendant successfully wins the trial or if they end up making a fool of themselves.
Besides Eldritch Horror and Voices In My Head, Konieczka is also the designer of Star Wars: Rebellion - a Star Wars board game that has one player controlling the Galactic Empire and another player managing the Rebel Alliance - and co-designer of the dungeon-crawling board game Descent: Journeys in the Dark - Second Edition.
Unexpected Games - a studio founded by Konieczka in 2019 - is the publisher behind the release of Voices In My Head, with the studio’s only previous title being The Initiative, a co-op board game designed by Konieczka and published last year.
Voices In My Head is set to be published in Q1 2022 at a retail release price of $40 (£29).