États d'Âme: great idea, bad game, and here's why I stand by not recommending it

Let me make a confession few reviewers dare to: I opened the États d'Âme box with stars in my eyes, and I closed it with a sigh. Not once, several times. I read the rules, they wore me out. I read them again, they wore me out more.

And I ended up asking myself the real question, the one that separates an impatient gamer's tantrum from a reasoned verdict: is it me, is it the rulebook, or is it the game? After picking the title apart from every angle, I have my answer, and it's a clear one. États d'Âme is a gorgeous promise that delivers a game I'm telling you to skip. Here's why, point by point.

Publisher: Origames · Distributor: Neoludis · Designer: Charlie McCarron · Art: Shirley Gong · Year: 2025 · Players: 1 to 6 · Playing time: 45 min (on paper) · Age: 10+ · Price: ~32 € · Mechanics: placement, bluffing, majority

On paper, a perfect score

Let's be fair first, because tearing a game down without granting its qualities is bad faith, and that's not how we do things here. États d'Âme starts from an idea I'd have killed to come up with: the medieval theory of the four humours. You play an apothecary who manipulates blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm to sway the choleric, sanguine, melancholic or phlegmatic temperament of a kingdom's inhabitants. It's clever, it's fresh, it kicks the umpteenth dragons and the umpteenth Renaissance merchants out the door. And visually, Shirley Gong's art direction is a knockout, a genuine aesthetic stance that fits the subject like a glove.

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In short, everything decided before you open the box is a success. The theme, the art, Origames' editorial nerve in taking a real risk. Keep that paradox in mind, because it's the whole tragedy of the game: the more beautiful the promise, the harder the fall.

How you play (once you've survived the rulebook)

The core, once you finally grasp it, fits on a postage stamp. On your turn, you place a potion face down on an inhabitant of a Scene card. As soon as two cards are full, you reveal, and you resolve according to a hierarchy of humours: a single choleric wins the scene on its own, two or more sanguines win together, melancholics win in pairs but one goes into exile, and the phlegmatic scoops the pot if nobody else has taken it. Your winning potions move onto the Kingdom board, you tick off objectives, you trigger Assembly tiles, and whoever lines up the most objectives wins.

That's it. Honestly, that's it. Hold on to that detail, because it's at the heart of my first complaint: this game is simple. It explains in ten minutes flat. A family gamer picks it up in a single round. So ask yourself, with me: how did a game this transparent in its workings manage to make me tune out three times just reading its rulebook?

First charge: a rulebook that betrays its own game

Here's my first criterion, and I'll state it as a conviction: a game must be playable on its own, with nothing but the rulebook in the box. Full stop. If playing it properly requires a YouTube video, a friend who tried it at a convention, or an online tutorial, then the game has failed the first step, the one it had no right to fail.

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And États d'Âme face-plants on that step with impressive consistency. The kicker is that I'm not the only one saying it. Le Meeple Jaune states in black and white that it has "a rulebook far too convoluted for a game that's much more accessible than it looks." Gus & Co mentions "rules that are sometimes fuzzy at first and need clarifying." T

he verdict is unanimous: the game is simple, the rulebook complicates it. That's a design flaw, not a cosmetic detail. You're sold an object meant to work on its own, and it doesn't. Picture a flat-pack piece of furniture whose instructions make you feel like an idiot when there are only four screws. You wouldn't thank the maker, you'd resent them. And I do.

Second charge: a game that outsources its own appeal to you

Fine. You've beaten the rulebook, you've got the rules down, you're ready for a good time. That's when the second blade falls, and it's the more serious one. États d'Âme only works if the players around the table play along with the chatter, the bluffing, the negotiation, the lies and the dirty tricks. The problem? The game never forces you to. It hopes you will. It counts on you.

And when your table doesn't go in for that theatre, the house of cards collapses. Strip away the chatter, strip away the lies, strip away the retort-wielding apothecary's grand speeches, and all that's left is a placement engine spinning in a vacuum. You drop tokens, you resolve scenes, you tick boxes, and you wait for it to come alive. It doesn't come alive. The experience turns flat, repetitive, and above all far too long for the sliver of sensation it hands you. The game promises heated negotiations, but it does nothing to spark them: it just hopes for them and leaves you to fend for yourself when they don't show up.

This, to me, is the cardinal sin of game design. A good game creates the conditions of its own interest. It puts you under tension through its rules, it forces interaction, it manufactures the bluff instead of politely waiting for it. États d'Âme, on the other hand, hands you the bill: it's up to you to make the game fun. It sells you a set, a backdrop and costumes, but it asks you to write the play and act out every role. At 32 euros, no thanks. I'm not paying for a potential I have to realise on its behalf, with the right crowd, on the right night, in the right mood. That's too many conditions, too many variables, too much uncertainty for an object that's supposed to deliver on its own.

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Add to that an ergonomy that helps no one, boards so dark you can barely make out the spaces, token colours so close you mix them up, and you get a game that tires your eyes on top of leaving you unsatisfied. The picture is complete.

Verdict: walk on by

I'll be blunt, because that's the service I owe you. États d'Âme is one to skip. Not because it's ugly, it's gorgeous. Not because it's complicated, it's simple. But because it fails at the only two things I ask of a game: to let itself be learned on its own, and to be interesting on its own. It fails at both, and it fails all the more cruelly because its starting idea deserved a masterpiece.

Is there an audience for it? At the margins, yes. If you've got a band of outgoing friends on hand, born performers who love to bluff, lie and curse each other for the fun of it, and who'll agree to digest the rulebook in your place, États d'Âmemight just come alive for an evening. But let's be honest: that group would have fun with anything, even with a plain deck of cards. They rescue the game, the game doesn't serve them.

For everyone else, which is to say the vast majority, keep your 32 euros. There are bluffing and majority games out there that take you by the hand and keep you on the edge of your seat without demanding that you do half the work. États d'Âme isn't one of them. Great idea, bad game. I stand by it, and I'm telling you to skip it.