It's Been Emotional
Published by Crocodog Games and designed by Geoff King, who also illustrated all the cards, It's Been Emotional is a family-friendly card game where the 2-8 players are playing 'emotion' cards to their individual 'mood' tableaus, with the winner being the first to have eight cards in their 'mood' while also satisfying their secret objective.
As you might guess from the name of the game, most of the cards represent a colour-coded emotion or emotional response: Joy, Trust, Fear, Surprise, Sadness, Disgust, Anger, Anticipation. Unless it's part of your hidden objective ('mission') there's no particular set collection requirement so it mostly doesn't matter which emotions are played to your mood tableau. What does matter are the powers set out on the cards as those are always active for the cards in your mood. Some emotion cards are labelled as 'hidden emotions' and that categorisation is important because certain other cards can only be played when you have a hidden emotion in your mood.
In addition to the emotion cards there are Drama, Brainfart, Pick Me Up and Put Down cards which can be used to manipulate the cards in your own and other players' tableaus. Again, these show powers that are permanently in effect for as long as the card remains in your mood...
We didn't get overly emotional in our plays of It's Been Emotional at Board's Eye View but we had some fun with the 'take that' Put Down and Drama cards. There were moans that some of the Pick Me Up cards were overpowered, especially those that weren't conditional on having a 'hidden emotion' in your mood, but no-one ever minded those cards if it was they that benefited from them :-) Inevitably, as a player's mood gets closer to having eight emotion cards that player becomes a prime targets for other players' 'take that' attacks. This gives the game a 'to and fro' flow but it can make it over long or even never-ending! It's Been Emotional is fun as 20-minute filler but risks overstaying its welcome when games run to the '60 minutes+' indicated on the box.
