Side Effects is a card game about curing your mental disorders.

Which sounds like a sentence that should have a lot more context around it.

Avoid having an episode while trying to get rid of disorders before your adversaries.

Side Effects Game Overview

Quick Rules Summary

Each player starts with four disorder cards face up in front of them as their “psyche” and four cards in hand.

On your turn, you draw a card, then play cards to treat your disorders using matching drug cards, or disrupt opponents using episode cards.

But, like real life, treating a disorder with medication opens you up to its side effects, new disorders that opponents can now add to you.

Therapy cards are the get-out-of-jail option that can treat most disorders without the baggage.

How do you win?

Be the first player to cure all disorders in your psyche.

Main Mechanisms

Take-that card play. You’re managing what’s in front of you while watching what everyone else is vulnerable to.

USP

The USP is the theme and mechanisms.

You treat a disorder, the medication creates a side effect, and that opens the door to more disorders.

That thematic consistency between what the cards do and what they represent is genuinely clever, and it also makes the game educational.

You pick up real disorder and medication names along the way.

Theme

Mental health is handled with more care than you might expect. The disorders are real: anxiety, depression, tremors, gambling addiction, madness and others.

The game doesn’t use them as punchlines.

Setup

Deal four disorders, deal four cards, go. Setup takes about a minute.

Components & Artwork

Tarot-sized linen-finish cards with bold, comic-book style artwork. Each disorder has its text readable from both sides of the table.

There’s nothing else in the box.

Ease of Teaching

Very easy. There are only four card types, and they all do exactly what they say. You could explain the full ruleset in under two minutes.

Similar Games

Fluxx is the obvious comparison as it’s a chaotic, card-driven take-that.

The difference is that Side Effects has a fixed goal, and the card interactions feel more deliberate, so it never quite reaches Fluxx levels of randomness.

Side Effects Review

Positives

The theme and mechanics work together, which is rarer than it should be in games at this weight.

The themetic ties of “treating tremors leaves you open to gambling addiction” are better than “playing this card means this might happen”.

It’s unexpectedly educational.

Negatives

The randomness is a real issue.

The take-that nature also means it can become a pile-on.

Summary

A clever concept held back by luck that outstays its welcome. If your group wants something fast, themed, and slightly chaotic to fill twenty minutes, it earns its place. If you want your decisions to matter, you might find the randomness more frustrating than fun.

Jesta ThaRogue