Tag: Narrative Choice

Games with Narrative Choice present players with multiple courses of action. Depending on the course of action chosen, the game will proceed along different paths.

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island is a game created by Ignacy Trzewiczek, the author of Stronghold. This time Trzewiczek takes the players to a deserted island, where they’ll play the parts of shipwreck survivors confronted by an extraordinary adventure. They’ll be faced with the challenges of building a shelter, finding food, fighting wild beasts, and protecting themselves from weather changes. Building walls around their homes, animal domestication, constructing weapons and tools from what they find, and much more await them on the island. The players decide in which direction the game will unfold and – after several in-game weeks of hard work – how their settlement will look. Will they manage to discover the secret of the island in the meantime? Will they find a pirate treasure, or an abandoned village? Will they discover an underground city or a cursed temple at the bottom of a volcano? Answers to these questions lie in hundreds of event cards and hundreds of object and structure cards that can be used during the game…

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island is an epic game from Portal. You will build a shelter, palisade, weapons, you will create tools like axes, knives, sacks, you will do everything you can to… to survive. You will have to find food, fight wild beasts, protect yourself from weather changes…

Take the role of one of four characters from the ship crew (cook, carpenter, explorer, or soldier) and face the adventure. Use your determination skills to help your teammates, discuss with them your plan, and put it into practice. Debate, discuss, and work on the best plan you all can make.

Search for treasures. Discover mysteries. Follow goals of six different, engaging scenarios. Start by building a big pile of wood and setting it on fire to call for help, and then start new adventures. Become an exorcist on cursed Island. Become a treasure hunter on Volcano Island. Become a rescue team for a young lady who’s stuck on rock island…

Let the adventure live!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Movement
  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Narrative Choice
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.80

Now or Never

Now or Never

Now or Never

Far to the south of The Last Ruin lies a cliffside village called The Monument. For generations, it protected an ancient shrine until the day a crystal meteorite descended. The meteor’s denizens slowly crept out into the world—bizarre monstrosities from nightmare, attacking all in their path. As they spread across the land, there was no intelligent malice nor grand invasion strategy; the creatures acted like a fungus—spreading into new territory sporadically. After many fruitless attempts to expel the monsters, the people of The Monument fled as their village crumbled, exiled to distant lands, resigned to a nomadic existence.

Twenty years later, there are rumors that the bizarre monsters are growing weak. They’re slower, less impervious to attack, some undergoing a gradual petrification until they crumble to dust. Is it the atmosphere? Are they dying of old age? Do they suffer from a strange disease? No one is certain, but as the news spreads, various factions set their eyes on the vacant, ruined village of The Monument. The original villagers, now refugees, are desperate to return and rebuild. But they must do it quickly, before someone else claims their home. This is their chance. It’s now or never.

In Now or Never, you and up to three friends compete to best rebuild your ancestral village and guide the rest of the villagers on their journey home. Although the creatures of the meteorite have lost much of their strength, many of them remain, and you must fight them off to protect traveling villagers. Now or Never is the third game in the Arzium storybook series that includes Above and Below and Near and Far.

Now or Never is a competitive strategy game that allows you to:

  • Choose one of four asymmetrical characters to play.
  • Rebuild the village so that returning villagers have a place to live. You must carefully choose what and where to build to maintain an advantage, earning the biggest rewards for long-term planning.
  • Interact with other players by hiring their specialists to perform special actions.
  • Combat dangerous creatures to rescue villagers.
  • Explore a fantasy landscape filled with bizarre places, technology, and peoples.

Now or Never includes two modes of play: standard and story. When playing in story mode, you read from a storybook when you explore, making choices and learning more about the characters and the world. Each character has their own set of stories, unique to the locations they explore and diverse in plot, perspective, and motive, allowing you to choose what direction your own story will take.

Journey to The Monument and help rebuild your ancient home!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Drafting
  • City Building
  • Hand Management
  • Narrative Choice
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.67

Maracaibo

Maracaibo

Maracaibo

Maracaibo, a strategy game for 1-4 players by Alexander Pfister, is set in the Caribbean during the 17th century. The players try to increase their influence in three nations in four rounds with a play time of 40 minutes per player.

The players sail on a round course through the Caribbean, e.g., you have city tiles where you are able to perform various actions or deliver goods to. One special feature is an implemented quest mode over more and various tiles, which tells the player, who chase after it, a little story.

As a player, you move with your ship around the course, managing it by using cards like in other games from Alexander Pfister.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Campaign
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Narrative Choice
  • Set Collection
  • Stock Holding

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.89

Vagrantsong

Vagrantsong

Vagrantsong

You trainhop aboard the Silver Ferryman, chasin’ a dream or runnin’ from the past. What you find is a welcomin’ hand – white glove, stretched skin… and a fiddle player in the distance, playin’ a tune that’s awfully inviting. Makes you never wanna leave.

In Vagrantsong, a cooperative and story-driven boss battler, you will take on the role of a Vagrant trapped on a supernatural ghost train. Face off against ghosts lingering on the train (called Haints), adjust your playstyle with Skills and Junk acquired along the way, and uncover the secrets of the Silver Ferryman in this spooky and challenging adventure.

In each of the 20+ Scenarios in Vagrantsong’s campaign, players will take turns spending their 3 Coins to take actions, such as: moving around the train board, investigating the unknown, and rummaging for items that might help them get out of a tight spot. Additionally, players can spend their Coins on more exclusive actions to remind a Haint of their lost Humanity, all in the hopes of freeing the spirit from the ghost train’s bone-chilling grip, and winning the Scenario in the process. But be careful! Each Haint has their own bag of tricks and gameplay mechanics. They will stop at nothing to make sure that the players lose all of their Humanity and stay aboard forever.

After each Scenario, players will have a moment to rest, allowing them the opportunity to change out their Skill and Junk cards, heal their Vagrant, and prepare for their next encounter aboard the Silver Ferryman.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Movement
  • Narrative Choice
  • Role Playing
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.08

Tales from the Loop

Tales from the Loop

Tales from the Loop

In the Tales From the Loop – The Board Game, you take the roles of local kids and play cooperatively to investigate whatever phenomena that threaten the islands (or perhaps just the local video store), and hopefully stop them. Each day starts at school, but as soon as the bell rings you can use whatever time you have before dinner and homework to go exploring! Player actions are integrated, meaning there’s no downtime as you wait for others taking their turn. It also makes cooperating with your fellow players dynamic as you can react to things that happen in a turn and don’t have to plan it all out from the start.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Narrative Choice

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 90 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.33

Sleeping Gods

Sleeping Gods

Sleeping Gods

“Are the stars unfamiliar here?” she asked, and the sky grew suddenly dark, the star’s patterns alien and exotic. “This is the Wandering Sea. The gods have brought you here, and you must wake them if you wish to return home.”

In Sleeping Gods, you and up to 3 friends become Captain Sofi Odessa and her crew, lost in a strange world in 1929 on your steamship, the Manticore. You must work together to survive, exploring exotic islands, meeting new characters, and seeking out the totems of the gods so that you can return home.

Sleeping Gods is a campaign game. Each session can last as long as you want. When you are ready to take a break, you mark your progress on a journey log sheet, making it easy to return to the same place in the game the next time you play. You can play solo or with friends throughout your campaign. It’s easy to swap players in and out at will. Your goal is to find at least fourteen totems hidden throughout the world. Like reading a book, you’ll complete this journey one or two hours at a time, discovering new lands, stories, and challenges along the way.

Sleeping Gods is an atlas game. Each page of the atlas represents only a small portion of the world you can explore. When you reach the edge of a page and you want to continue in the same direction, you simply turn to a new page and sail onward.

Sleeping Gods is a storybook game. Each new location holds wild adventure, hidden treasures, and vivid characters. Your choices affect the characters and the plot of the game, and may help or hinder your chances of getting home!

Welcome to a vast world. Your journey starts now.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Hand Management
  • Narrative Choice
  • Push Your Luck
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 1,200 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.19

Skyrim

Skyrim

Skyrim

ADVENTURES IN THE WORLD OF SKYRIM!

Before the Dragonborn came to Skyrim….

You are surviving members of the Blades, a legendary group who long protected the Empire of Tamriel! Abandoned by the empire, you must work together to thwart a plot that threatens the whole of Skyrim

Build a unique character in the world of the Elder Scrolls. Choose between a Nord, Dunmer, Imperial, Altmer, Khajiit or Orsimer. Equip your character with a wide range of weapons, spells and armour. Travel across the Holds of Skyrim to places like Riften, Solitude, Falkreath and Whiterun. Attempt a huge range of evolving quests that change the game with each decision, Explore the wilderness. Gain side quests from mysterious characters. Delve into ancient ruins and tombs. Battle Draugr, Frostbite Spiders, Dragons, Dwemer Constructs and Daedra. The deeper you delve, the deadlier your foes will become. Gain experience and amazing treasures. Upgrade and enchant your gear. Level up your character with a wide range of unique skills and abilities. Play through six chapters of two huge campaigns spanning 25 years in the history of Skyrim in this endlessly replayable boardgame.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – The Adventure Game is a 1-4 player co-operative game of adventure and exploration across Skyrim. Players take the roles of heroes involved in epic quests, working together to defeat their enemies and exploring the vast expanse of Skyrim. You will be able to choose character miniatures like the Khajiit, Nord, or High Elf; plan your strategy with weapons or spells; and fight your way through forgotten mines, Draugr-infested tombs, or ancient Dwemer cities to find ancient treasures and increase your power.

The players must keep an eye out as the threat increases across Skyrim as Dragons, Daedra, Trolls, and more roam the lands and wreak havoc across the holds. Players need to work together to keep the lands free, whilst balancing the demands of their most important quests.

The base game is divided into two campaigns of three chapters each. The decisions the players make from their first turn have a distinct effect on the unfolding story and encounters, making the whole campaign experience different every time you play. You can even save your progress after each game and start the next chapter with the same character, equipment, and skills.

With the numerous choices of characters, gear, magic, and skills matched with the many decisions each player makes through their quests, there are literally hundreds of hours of gameplay, with some stories not even seen based on your early decisions. The face of Skyrim can change during the game, impacting the course of the players’ experience in subsequent chapters. At any time, the players can simply reset, choose another character and play style, make different choices, and experience things differently. Alternatively, pick a chapter that sounds fun and drop in to just play that adventure as a one-off.

Key mechanics:

A Living Board
The game board represents the province of Skyrim. Players move their characters — represented by 32mm scale plastic miniatures — across the region, visiting Strongholds, exploring dungeons and meeting interesting characters as the story unfolds. But they are not the only ones there; roaming monsters appear, blocking roads and threatening the peace in Skyrim. Several game effects could lead to the fall of a Stronghold so players need to keep an eye on the state of unrest and the active dangers across the board.

Customizable Characters
There are no classes in Skyrim. Each character has a different starting innate ability and additional abilities that are unlocked as they learn specific skills, but that doesn’t mean that they are tied to a gameplay style. For example, even though Nords shine when they are developed with a focus on warrior skills and equipment, a player could decide to make their Nord a spellcaster, or a summoner, and still retrain midway through the game after finding an amazing sword they really want to use. Players can change their progression path mid-game, and enjoy many different play styles.

Upgradeable Equipment
There are plenty of equippable items: weapons, pieces of armor, trinkets, etc. Most of these items can be customized; by either Enchanting or Upgrading them in a Stronghold. When Upgrading or Enchanting an item, the player draws an Enchantment/Upgrade card, and slots it underneath the item, altering its properties. A piece of armor can be Upgraded so it becomes better against Heavy Attacks, for example, and it can also be Enchanted so it helps the character regenerate Stamina faster. When learning the Smithing and the Enchanting skills, the players get to draw more cards and choose between them, making the experience of customizing equipment richer and letting them focus on the playstyle they prefer. Furthermore, when playing in a group, one player can specialize their character in Enchanting or Smithing and upgrade all their allies’ items by meeting in a Stronghold, adding another layer of cooperative gameplay.

Quests in Cards
The story in the game is told using Quest cards. Players draw Main Quests — those that push the narrative forward — and Personal Quests — side stories gained by exploring the vastness of the province of Skyrim. By completing or failing them, the story progresses. Many of these Quests give the players a choice at the end. This choice chains the Quest with a new one, creating a branching story that changes every time the game is played. Failing a quest doesn’t mean losing the game; instead, failure often becomes another way of choosing. The cards are organized in a way in which, if a card is removed as a result of Quest being failed or a game effect is triggered, the next card will take its place, dramatically changing the story.

Combat System
With an assortment of weapons, ranging from daggers to bows, players will be able to engage in combat with dangerous enemies, whether they be in a dungeon or part of a questline. Each weapon and spell will inform the player what attacks it can perform and how much Stamina or Magicka they’ll have to spend to use them. The player will roll the custom dice and attempt to overcome each weapon’s specific Skill Tests; hitting with heavier weapons is bound to be harder than hitting with lighter weapons. Combat is fast, exciting, and deadly, although strategy is a key factor to success. Some enemies, in fact, will employ unorthodox tactics, including the ability to heal themselves or wear nearly impenetrable armors.

Dungeon Crawling
Players can visit increasingly dangerous caves, mines, tombs, ruins, and Dwemer cities across Skyrim. Dungeons are built with cards each representing a major threat in that area of the dungeon. It might be a terrifying Draugr or a surprise trap that, if you’re lucky, one of the characters may be capable of disabling. As the characters level up, the lower-level adversaries are discarded, scaling the difficulty of the dungeons along with the player’s level. The more you visit a certain type of dungeon, the more likely you will see its more fearsome denizens, albeit with better rewards!

Cooperative
The whole game is fully cooperative. Players are encouraged to discuss their strategies and to collaborate to advance in their own storylines. Each player will be following their own storyline, joining together at the end of each chapter, when their plots are woven together into an epic finale for the whole party.
There are some situations where characters, even if they have the same overall goal, find themselves on opposite sides of a struggle, and may interfere with each other as they progress. This gives an interesting layer of light competitive gameplay, whilst still keeping the cooperative nature of the game in the forefront.
Expansions
The Dawnguard expansion will add a third campaign with three additional chapters to play through, new characters, dungeon adversaries, treasures, events, and more. One of our expansions will make the Ghosts of the Blades haunt you throughout Skyrim during the first Campaign of the game and another threatens devastation to Skyrim in the form of a great dragon! There is much more to be revealed through the Gamefound campaign. The team has planned for a massive upgrade kit converting all the wandering monsters over to 32mm scale plastic miniatures which are all compatible in scale with the miniatures game The Elder Scrolls Call to Arms. More information will be revealed in the run-up to the launch of the board game


All in all, the Elder Scrolls Skyrim Adventure Game will offer players dozens and dozens of hours of adventure exploring the game world. Expansions will ensure there’s even more Skyrim to be had.

Game Mechanics:

  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Narrative Choice
  • Role Playing

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.32

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Have you ever had the desire to walk the streets of Victorian London with Sherlock Holmes in search of Professor Moriarty? To search the docks for the giant rat of Sumatra? To walk up Baker Street as the fog is rolling in and hear Holmes cry out, “Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot!”? Now you can! You can enter the opium den beneath the Bar of Gold, but beware, that may be Colonel Sebastian Moran lurking around the corner. You can capture the mystery and excitement of Holmes’ London in this challenging and informative game. You, the player, will match your deductive abilities against your opponents and the master sleuth himself, Sherlock Holmes.

In Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, you are presented with a mystery to solve, and it is then up to you to trace the threads of evidence through the byways and mansions of nineteenth century London. You will interview suspects, search the newspapers for clues, and put together the facts to reach a solution.

Why were two lions murdered in Hyde Park? Who is responsible for the missing paintings from the National Gallery? Who murdered Oswald Mason and why? These are just a few of the cases that will challenge your ingenuity and deductive abilities.

This is not a board game: No dice, no luck, but a challenge to your mental ability. The game has been thoroughly researched for Holmesian and Victorian accuracy so as to capture a feeling of that bygone era.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deduction
  • Narrative Choice
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 8 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.68

Near and Far

Near and Far

Near and Far

Four wanderers search for the Last Ruin, a city that legends say contains an artifact that will grant the greatest desires of the heart. A lost love, redemption, acceptance, a family rejoined– these are the fires that fuel the wanderers’ journeys, but can they overcome their own greed and inner demons on the way?

In Near and Far, you and up to three friends explore many different maps in a search for the Last Ruin, recruiting adventurers, hunting for treasure, and competing to be the most storied traveler. You must collect food and equipment at town for long journeys to mysterious locales, making sure not to forget enough weapons to fight off bandits, living statues, and rusty robots! Sometimes in your travels you’ll run into something unique and one of your friends will read what happens to you from a book of stories, giving you a choice of how to react, creating a new and memorable tale each time you play.

Near and Far is a sequel to Above and Below and includes a book of encounters. This time players read over ten game sessions to reach the end of the story. Each chapter is played on a completely new map with unique art and adventures.

Answer the call of the ruins and begin your journey.

Game Mechanics:

  • Campaign
  • Dice Rolling
  • Narrative Choice
  • Network Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Storytelling
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.87

My Father’s Work

My Father's Work

My Father's Work

The walls were lined with iron shelves, each metal slat overfilled with glass jars containing formaldehyde and grotesque curiosities within. Pristine brass tools and refined metals of a quality I had never before laid eyes upon were strewn across sturdy slabs of rock and wood, their edges sharp with use. However, my eyes were soon drawn to a sturdy writing desk, its mahogany eaves inlaid with thin strips of copper, the center of which contained a well-worn leather-bound book. My father’s journal — passed down to me and representing years of knowledge and countless experiments. And inside that weathered tome, atop the pearly parchment oxidized yellow at its frayed edges, were the deliberate quill marks of a crazed genius outlining the ambitious project he could never complete in one lifetime — his masterwork.

Without realizing it, my hands were shaking as I clutched the book to my chest. At once, I felt an ownership and anxiety for the scientific sketches scrawled so eloquently on those frayed sheets. It was at that moment that I began my obsession: I would restore this laboratory to its former brilliance and dedicate my life to completing my father’s work!

In My Father’s Work, players are competing mad scientists entrusted with a page from their father’s journal and a large estate in which to perform their devious experiments. Players earn points by completing experiments, aiding the town in its endeavors, upgrading their macabre estates, and hopefully completing their father’s masterwork.

But they have to balance study and active experimentation because at the end of each generation, all of their experiments and resources are lost to time until their child begins again with only the “Journaled Knowledge and Estate” they have willed to them — and since the game is played over the course of three generations, it is inevitable that the players will rouse the townsfolk to form angry mobs or spiral into insanity from the ethically dubious works they have created. The player with the most points at the end of three generations wins and becomes the most revered, feared, ingenious scientist the world has ever known!

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Narrative Choice
  • Storytelling
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.20