Onirim is a solitaire card game and I generally don’t play physical games solo…
So I got the digital version!
You are a Dream-walker, lost in a mysterious labyrinth, and you must discover the oneiric doors before your dream-time runs out – or you will remain trapped forever!
Onirim Game Play
You have a hand of five cards which have colours and a symbol.
Location cards are Red, Green, Blue and Brown (although they look Cream?) and will have a Sun, Moon or Key symbol at the top. There are other cards that I’ll mention as I get to them.
For now, just know you’re trying to play 8 door cards, 2 of each of the 4 colours.
You play cards from your hand one at a time and every time you play one you draw one. But you can’t play the same symbol twice in a row!
Play 3 cards of the same colour in a row (different symbols obvs.) and you unlock a door by searching for a door of the colour of the cards played and putting it into play. Congrats, that’s one door open!
When drawing, you may happen to draw a Nightmare card, this is discarded and resolved. To get rid of it you have to do one of the following:
- Discard your hand and draw a new one (if the deck runs out you lose)
- Put the top 5 cards of the deck into the discard pile (Again, ticking along to an empty deck)
- Discard a key card from your hand (if you have one)
- Put a discovered Door in Limbo (This is shuffled back into the deck at the end of this turn)
Doors
If you happen to draw a door card and also happen to have the key to the matching colour in your hand, you play the door immediately and discard the key. But if you don’t have the key when you draw it, the door goes to Limbo.
If you don’t want to play a card you can just discard a card to draw a new one. Important if you need a particular card to keep a run of matching colour cards going.
If you discard a Key card, you look at the top 5 cards of the deck, discard one and return the rest on top in any order.
Just continue playing and open all 8 doors and you win but if the deck runs out you lose!
Theme
Abstract and weird but really fun. It uses words like “Limbo” and “Nightmare” because it’s a dream… it’s creepy, but you are just symbol/colour matching and I’m ok with that.
Onirim Summary
My favourite solo card game is Samurai Spirit and this is much less pretty. There you have 1 card and you’re choosing the best thing to do with it each round.
One important thing is that the moons and keys are rarer than the suns. So a ‘sun, moon, sun’ sandwich is a common way of opening a door.
Drawing a door when you have the right key is a good feeling. Drawing a nightmare card when you have a key you don’t need is good too.
There is an expansion available in the app called ‘Glyphs’ which gives you a new symbol type making doors easier to open. So now you need to open 3 doors of each colour.
Also, if you discard a Glyph card from your hand you trigger an Incantation. Look at the top 5 cards of the deck, if there is a Door card you open it, and put the rest on the bottom of the deck in any order.
This is a very good phone game. Once you can play while doing something else or waiting for something.
Would I bother with the physical version? Probably not.
Jesta ThaRogue