Help an alien organize their library!
What Is Out of Sorts?
Out of Sorts is a cooperative organization game for 2* to 5 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 30 minutes to play. It’s currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, with a pledge level of $19 for a copy of the game. (There’s also a $9 tier for a print and play version, and a tier to get the other titles from Always Awake Games.) Out of Sorts was originally published in 2024, but this is a second edition that includes some tweaks, new artwork, and a mini-expansion.
*The game is designed to work best with at least 3 players, but there is a 2-player variant.
Out of Sorts was designed and illustrated by Connor Wake and published by Always Awake Games.
New to Kickstarter? Check out our crowdfunding primer.
Out of Sorts Components
Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality.
Here’s what comes in the box:
- Librarian board
- Newspaper token
- 54 Book cards
- 54 Index cards
- 9 Check cards
- 9 Category cards
- 18 Directive cards (for mini-expansion)
The book and index decks are basically identical, just with their colors reversed. Each “book” is an abstract image with mysterious swirls, shapes, glyphs. Some of them seem more representational than others, but nothing is definitively a particular thing.
The category cards are double-sided, so you have 18 categories to choose from, ranging from the fairly mundane (Flora, Reptiles) to the more abstract (Math, Mystery) to strangely specific (Thermodynamics, Art History).
The librarian board and newspaper are a very simple device to keep track of how many mistakes you’ve made (three strikes and you’re out!), but I love it. It shows the alien sitting in a comfy chair, blanket over its lap, and it’s holding an alien newspaper in front of its face. As you make mistakes, you move the newspaper down the board so the alien’s disgruntled face appears, and eventually the newspaper is removed entirely, showing the alien with its arms crossed. It’s elegant and delightful.
Note that in the Kickstarter video, there are what appear to be tiny bound books—these are not actually included in the game, but were just made for the video. But maybe someday there will be a deluxe edition, right?
How to Play Out of Sorts
You can download a copy of the rulebook here.
The Goal
The goal of the game is to correctly sort as many of the alien’s book as possible in a limited amount of time.
Setup
Choose one player to be the Sorter, and the other players are Finders; the Sorter should sit opposite the Finders if possible.
Place the Librarian in the center of the table, with the newspaper set at the highest level. Shuffle the index deck and place it on the “Lost” side of the Librarian. Shuffle the category cards, draw three, and return the rest to the box. Choose which side of each card to use and the order, placing them in a line in front of the Sorter.
Shuffle the book deck and divide the books roughly evenly among all the Finders.
Sort the check cards into a face-up stack with number 1 at the top, number 9 at the bottom. This is the round deck.
Start a 20-minute timer.
Gameplay
The bulk of the game takes place over the course of several rounds—nine rounds at most, but it ends when the 20-minute timer runs out. Then there’s a final inspection that will determine your score. Within the round, there isn’t really a turn order—players play simultaneously, though when you’re first learning the game you might take turns just to reduce the chaos.
To begin a round, draw the top 6 index cards from the Lost stack and place them face-down in the middle of the playing area.
Find and Sort
Any player who doesn’t currently have an index may draw one of the face-down cards, and then describe it to the Finders without showing them the card. Finders may look through their whole pile of book cards, trying to find the one that matches the description. You may show other players one book at a time, but you cannot reveal a bunch of cards at once. (Remember, if you’re a Finder, the index you’re looking for may be in your own hand!)
Once a match has been found, the player with the index reveals it to show that it matches, and places the index face-down in the “Found” stack next to the Librarian, and the matching book is placed face-up in front of everyone.
When a book is found, the Sorter may discuss with other players (briefly—time is ticking!) which category the book belongs to, and then puts it into their hand. Think of the Sorter’s hand as one long shelf with all of the found books on it: they are grouped into the three categories, and then within each category the Sorter must figure out a system for arranging them in order. For instance, if the category is “Flora” you might say that you’re putting them in order based on life-cycle: seed first, then sprout, then small plant, etc. The Sorter can rearrange cards in their hands and describe what they’re doing to other players, but they cannot show their hand to any of the Finders.
System Check
Once all 6 index cards have been found, it’s time for a system check. Shuffle the Found stack and then reveal a number of cards shown on the current check card. The Finders must put these index cards into the right order, matching the order that they are in the Sorter’s hand.
When the Finders are done, the Sorter verifies the order. If it’s correct, the players have earned a checkmark and place the sorted cards next to the round deck. If the sort is incorrect, the Sorter first places them in the correct order to show the Finders, and then the cards are shuffled back into the Found stack. Slide the Librarian’s newspaper down one space.
If they’ve earned the number of checks shown on the check card, then this round is complete! Otherwise, reveal another set of cards and try to do the system check again.
When the system check has been completed, you’re ready for another round: discard the top check card to reveal the next one, put all the index cards from the successful checks back into the Found stack, and go back to the “Find and Sort” phase.
Final Inspection
If you get 3 failures (and the Librarian drops their newspaper entirely), or the timer runs out, or you get through all the system checks on round 9, then sorting is over and it’s time for the final inspection.
Shuffle the Found stack and draw the top card and place it in the center of the table.
Start a timer for the amount shown at the bottom of the current check card.
The Finders draw and reveal a card from the Found stack, and place it into the row where it belongs (at first, in relation to the one revealed card). If they aren’t sure, they can just discard it and continue with the next card.
The Sorter verifies if the card placement is correct. If it’s incorrect, it is removed and placed below the Librarian.
Continue flipping and sorting until you’ve finished the Found stack or the timer goes off.
Scoring
For each card correctly placed, you score 1 point. For each card you sorted incorrectly, you lose 1 point. Discarded (skipped) cards are worth nothing. Compare your score to the chart in the rulebook to find out how you did—the range of scores goes from negative (everything gets vented into space) to a perfect 54.
Micro-Management Expansion
If you want a bit more of a challenge, you can use the Micro-Management expansion. During setup, shuffle the directive cards and place them next to the Sorter, and add 10 minutes to the timer.
After the first round, every time a book is found, the Sorter must flip over a directive card—this gives some instructions about where the new book must be placed. For instance, you might have to place it in the first half of the shelf, or next to the last book you sorted. Some of them are even placed facing outward, so the Finders can see them.
Variants
There are a few other play variants included in the rulebook—for instance, using fewer categories (or none at all). Another one, recommended for 5 players, is to have a huge mess of face-down books on the table instead of everyone having their own hand. You can pick up and peek at one card at a time anywhere on the table.
For 2 players, the Sorter is the one who looks at all the active index cards and describes them to the Finder, since the Finder will have all of the books.
Why You Should Play Out of Sorts
Out of Sorts is an exercise in memory and organization, though there are some additional elements thrown in there to make it more challenging, like the time pressure and the searching. The ultimate goal is to arrange all 54 books in a particular order so that the Finders can replicate that order later. The more your organizational structure makes sense, the less memorization it requires, and vice versa—somebody with a photographic memory won’t need to rely on your explanations that this card looks like an ear, which is related to Royalty because this other card looks like an advisor and is whispering to the queen. But I’m guessing most of us can’t remember the order of 54 abstract images without at least a little bit of help.
It reminds me a bit of playing Wilmot’s Warehouse, another cooperative memory-and-organization game, because that one also features random little images that you’ll have to remember later. In the case of Wilmot’s Warehouse, you’re building a sort of memory palace, telling a story of these weird objects as you place them into the warehouse. However, the warehouse is a grid, and that extra dimension really helps (at least for those of us who think spatially) because each tile can be connected to others in multiple directions.
Out of Sorts, on the other hand, is a single line: the Sorter has all the cards in their hand, from alien A to alien Z. The categories do help, because at least that breaks the line up in to 3 groupings, but within each grouping you need a good system. For instance, in one game one category was “Cats,” and so everything that we could pretend looked like a cat went in that group. Within the group, we decided that the order was based on “zooming out” from the cat—so the first card was a close-up of a nose with whiskers, followed by one where you could see a cat’s head, and we continued zooming out until the last card in the group was a tiny cat, seen from a far distance.
It’s not always that easy, though. How do you select an order for Math? Or Royalty? In some cases, we’ve resorted to stories, akin to Wilmot’s Warehouse, but it’s just a linear tale and we need to remember how the story goes to put the cards in order. The rulebook recommends that the first time you play, you use the categories Flora, Monsters, and Cosmos—but then we found that nearly everything looked like a plant monster from space. (As it turns out, organizing your cards as if the three categories are one continuum is not nearly as helpful as imposing hard breaks between them.)
The biggest limiting factor is that time pressure. First, you have to find the books that match the randomly drawn index cards. Figuring out how to describe a shape to somebody who can’t see it is a big challenge, especially since the cards don’t have a marked top or bottom, so you don’t know if the person who has the card is holding it upside down relative to your perspective. As you play the game more with the same group, you may find some shorthands for some of them, which speeds up this part of the process. (Also: the first time we played, we did take turns with people drawing an index and looking for it, but there’s no way you can get through all the cards at that pace. Simultaneous is definitely the way to go once everyone is familiar with the game.)
Okay, so now you’ve found the books. Great—time for a system check. Each round, the system checks get harder. You may need to draw more cards at a time to sort, or perform the system check more times before you pass. By the last round (which I admit we haven’t even reached yet), you’ll have to draw 8 cards at a time to sort, and get it right 3 times to pass.
The more system checks you pass, the more Found books you’ll have for that final inspection, and the more time you get for the final inspection. If you wipe out in round 1, you’ll only have 2 minutes to complete your final inspection, though there are also only 6 Found cards to sort. By Round 9, you’ll get a full 10 minutes to put all 54 cards in order.
Deciding which cards to skip is also part of the strategy. It’s not like taking the SAT: wrong answers count against you, so you’re usually better off skipping a card than making a random guess. In one instance, we decided to guess on one we weren’t totally sure about, and got it correct—great, that’s one point! But now this one card we weren’t sure about was in the row, and all of the other cards we drew after it had to be placed in relation to the one we were guessing at to begin with! We lost several points in that play, and learned to skip cards if our memories of it were hazy.
I really enjoy Out of Sorts—it’s very much my sort of game. Finding specific books in a huge pile and getting a library in order? I’ve been training for this for years. Looking at little glyphs and telling stories about what they represent? That’s my artist’s eye at work: hello, pareidolia! And I always love games about communicating with aliens and figuring out a “language.” Out of Sorts scratches the same sort of itch that Wilmot’s Warehouse does, but in a tiny little package. I will note that players who get stressed out about real-time games may not enjoy it quite as much, and it may also present a bigger challenge to those who have memory problems or aphantasia (though the cooperative aspect can also help with some of that).
If you like putting things in order and making up weird stories, check out Out of Sorts! For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Out of Sorts Kickstarter page!
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a prototype copy of this game for review purposes.
