Tag: Storytelling

Storytelling games present players with a narrative story that the players directly influence through their in-game actions.

Chronicles of Crime

| OTSG Staff

Chronicles of Crime is a cooperative game of crime investigation, mixing an app, a board game and a touch of Virtual Reality.

With the same physical components (board, locations, characters and items), players will be able to play plenty of different scenarios and solve as many different crime stories.

Players start the app, choose the scenario they want to play, and follow the story. The goal being to catch the killer of the current case in the shortest time possible.

Using the Scan&Play technology, each component (locations, characters, items, etc.) has a unique QR code, which, depending on the scenario selected, will activate and trigger different clues and stories. That means players will be able to get new stories way after the game is released simply by downloading the app’s updates, without any shipping of new physical components involved.

The VR experience only requires a mobile phone. Players simply put the VR glasses (optional buy) onto their mobile device, and put the VR glasses on their nose, holding their mobile device in front of their eyes, to immerse themselves in the game’s universe and search for clues in a virtual world.

The game comes with 1 tutorial and 5 scenarios, but more can be downloaded directly inside the app!
Each session last around 1h to 1h30 minutes and many scenarios are connected to each other in order to tell a much bigger story.

 

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deduction
  • Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.06

Call to Adventure: Epic Origins

| OTSG Staff

In this hero-crafting card game, 1-4 players compete to earn the highest Destiny score while cooperating to defeat the Adversary. Like the original Call To Adventure, Epic Origins is a tableau-building game where players draft cards, cast runes, and overcome challenges to score victory points.

For players familiar with Call To Adventure game system, Epic Origins introduces a high fantasy theme inspired by classic dungeon-crawling RPGs. The new Heritage card type provides options like Elf, Halfling, and Dwarf. Class cards allow you to invest Experience to “level up” your character. High fantasy themes and challenges can be found throughout the game’s 150+ unique cards.

This game also features overhauled Solo and Co-Op play. Double-sided Adversaries provide an evolving challenge: face a lower-level Adversary at the end of Act II, then the Final Adversary at the end of Act III. In Campaign Mode, players can unlock new cards by defeating each new Adversary. The game incorporates more rewards for cooperative play while still incentivizing individual achievement.

While points decide the winner of the game, Call To Adventure encourages storytelling at the end of the game. Epic Origins also includes a guide for converting your final tableau into a 5th Edition D&D character.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Role Playing
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.38

Call to Adventure

| OTSG Staff

Make your fate! Inspired by character-driven fantasy storytelling, Call to Adventure challenges 1-4 players to create the hero with the greatest destiny by acquiring traits, facing challenges, and overcoming adversaries.

Call to Adventure features a unique “rune rolling” system for resolving challenges, a point-based system that encourages storytelling, and over 150 unique cards. Players begin each game with an origin card that provides their backstory as well as two “starter” abilities. Each round they may either acquire trait cards from the board or face a challenge. Challenges each have two possible paths a player can choose from. For example, players who encounter the Thieves’ Guild may choose to train as a spy, or train as a killer. Each challenge has a difficulty that must be overcome by rolling successes on carved runes. The more a player has of the abilities required to overcome the challenge, the more runes they will be able to cast.

Failed challenges lead players to acquire experience points that may be spent to “push” through tougher challenges. But beware, while some negative experiences will help your hero grow, too many tragedies set them on a dark path.

As players’ heroes grow in ability and experience, they move on to harder challenges, eventually facing deadly adversaries and acquiring more and more destiny points. The player whose hero has the highest destiny score wins the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.01

Betrayal at House on the Hill

| OTSG Staff

Betrayal at House on the Hill quickly builds suspense and excitement as players explore a haunted mansion of their own design, encountering spirits and frightening omens that foretell their fate. With an estimated one hour playing time, Betrayal at House on the Hill is ideal for parties, family gatherings or casual fun with friends.

Betrayal at House on the Hill is a tile game that allows players to build their own haunted house room by room, tile by tile, creating a new thrilling game board every time. The game is designed for three to six people, each of whom plays one of six possible characters.

Secretly, one of the characters betrays the rest of the party, and the innocent members of the party must defeat the traitor in their midst before it’s too late! Betrayal at House on the Hill will appeal to any game player who enjoys a fun, suspenseful, and strategic game.

Betrayal at House on the Hill includes detailed game pieces, including character cards, pre-painted plastic figures, and special tokens, all of which help create a spooky atmosphere and streamline game play.

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.40

Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate

| OTSG Staff

The shadow of Bhaal has come over Baldur’s Gate, summoning monsters and other horrors from the darkness!

As you build and explore the iconic city’s dark alleys and deadly catacombs, you must work with your fellow adventurers to survive the terrors ahead. That is, until some horrific evil turns one — or possibly more — of you against each other. Was it a mind flayer’s psionic blast or the whisperings of a deranged ghost that caused your allies to turn traitor? You have no choice but to keep your enemies close!

Based on the award-winning Betrayal at House on the Hill board game, in Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate you’ll return to Baldur’s Gate again and again thanks to the fifty included scenarios only to discover it’s never the same game twice.

Can you and your party survive the madness, or will you succumb to the mayhem and split (or slaughter!) the party?

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.56

The Adventures of Robin Hood

| OTSG Staff
The Adventures of Robin Hood

The Adventures of Robin Hood

In England in 1193, the county of Nottinghamshire suffers under the yoke of evil Prince John and his henchmen. Can Robin Hood and his companions escape the sheriff’s guards and complete their adventures successfully?

In The Adventures of Robin Hood, players take on the role of Robin Hood and his companions, with the action taking place on a living game board with no set paths. The board changes over the course of each adventure, and the movement of the characters is handled via an innovative mechanism that uses different length wooden character pieces. Various actions and secrets are integrated into the game levels and are revealed only in the course of the story. The game board “remembers” what players have already explored or found, and thanks to the special materials, the entire game can be set up and dismantled quickly.

Instead of using cards as in the author’s Legends of Andor, the game tells the story of Robin Hood in a high-quality hardcover book, and depending on the decisions the players make, the story changes…

Game Mechanics:

  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.82

Untold Adventures Await

| OTSG Staff
Untold Adventures Await

Untold Adventures Await

Untold: Adventures Await is the customizable storytelling game powered by Rory’s Story Cubes. Players become the heroes of a thrilling tale that unfolds in under 60 minutes. Think of Untold as your favorite TV series, except rather than just sitting back and watching, you’re right in the middle of the action!

Every game of Untold is an episode of five distinct scenes, each featuring intriguing locales, dangerous threats and shocking plot twists that propel the action toward an epic showdown. Scene Cards and StoryCubes provide the elements of the adventure, while Reaction Cards reveal what happens when the players take action.

Untold takes collaborative storytelling in a whole new direction, allowing players of all ages to unleash their creativity thanks to a unique game engine that’s extremely accessible, always unpredictable, and rooted in inspiration. Players can also craft multiple-episode story arcs that will see their characters and their world grow as new challenges arise.

Whatever genres of story you enjoy, Untold lets one to four players experience endless and unforgettable tales. What amazing adventures will you have? They await you in Untold!

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Role Playing
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.67

Scooby Doo! Betrayal at Mystery Mansion

| OTSG Staff
Scooby Doo! Betrayal at Mystery Mansion

Scooby Doo! Betrayal at Mystery Mansion

Based on the award-winning Betrayal at House on the Hill board game, Betrayal at Mystery Mansion is the mash-up fans have been clamoring for!

Play as Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, Velma, Daphne, or Fred as you explore the mansion and its grounds, finding clues, encountering strange occurrences, and maybe even catching sight of a monster! When you find enough clues to learn what’s really going on, that’s when the haunt starts, and one player will switch sides to play the role of the monster! Will you be able to stop them before they carry out their sinister plan?

Betrayal at Mystery Mansion contains 25 new haunts based on popular episodes and movies from the Scooby-Doo oeuvre, with different monsters, items, events, and locations each time you play.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Movement
  • Role Playing
  • Storytelling
  • Team Based
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 5 Players
  • 25 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.80

Micro Macro Crime City Full House

| OTSG Staff
Micro Macro Crime City Full House

Micro Macro Crime City Full House

Crimes have taken place all over the city, and you want to figure out exactly what’s happened, so you’ll need to look closely at the giant city map to find all the hidden information and trace the trails of those who had it in for their foes.

MicroMacro: Crime City – Full House includes 16 cases for you to solve. Each case includes a number of cards that ask you to find something on the map or uncover where someone has gone or otherwise reveal information relevant to a case. The city map serves as a map in time as well as space, so you’ll typically find people in multiple locations throughout the streets and buildings, and you need to piece together what happened, whether by going through the case card by card or by reading only the starting card in the case and trying to figure out everything that happened for yourself. Will you be able to answer all questions about the case without fail?

Unlike the original MicroMacro: Crime City, Full House marks each case with symbols so that parents can decide which cases the youngest investigators are cleared to research.

Game Mechanics:

  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Storytelling
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 15 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.23

Lost Ones

| OTSG Staff
Lost Ones

Lost Ones

Lost Ones is a “Choose Your Own Path” story utilizing map tile exploration. Each player takes on the role of a Lost One, a kidnapped youth taken to the Otherworld, home of the Fae. Thankfully, a conflict between warring Fae factions has created enough distraction for the Lost Ones to escape. Now you must explore this magical realm of dreams and nightmares and hopefully discover a way home while the remaining Fae hunt you down.
Each player takes between 1 and 3 actions in a round. Once a player completes their action, any player who hasn’t taken their turn can take their actions. Repeat taking rounds until the game ends.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Hand Management
  • Narrative Choice
  • Storytelling
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.50