Base price: $15.
1 – 6 players.
Play time: ~60 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 1; kinda the way these go.
Full disclosure: A review copy of Backstories: Alone Under the Ice was provided by Lucky Duck Games.
I probably shouldn’t write while I’m hungry, but here we are. I had the perfect system: play Hades, order food, write until food gets here, Hades + TV break, and then back to writing. It would have worked perfectly but now I’m super hungry and just watching the app update with my food status. That’s not particularly useful or healthy, but it is what it is. I’ll get to it in time. While we both wait, however, why not read on about Backstories: Alone Under the Ice?
Your brother is nowhere to be found, and the last thing he sent you was a cryptic letter with rumors of Nazi treasure. As any self-respecting person would, you decide to set out to find him and to keep the treasure away from Nazis, who don’t deserve anything. Relatively popular opinion. As you do, you uncover that there may be more awaiting you high up in the mountains than you expected, as the only thing that’s pretty much guaranteed to appear alongside Nazi treasure is danger. And possibly Nazis. Will you be able to save your brother … and yourself? And the treasure.
Contents
Setup
Absolutely none. Draw the first card when you’re ready to start!
Gameplay
Backstories is a game all about completing objectives and working through a story! It’ll work a lot like a choose-your-own-adventure game or a point-and-click adventure. It’s cooperative, though! So make decisions as a group and figure things out.
When you want to use certain items or take certain actions, you take the indicated card and flip it over, placing the cut-out card above it so that only the indicated text is visible. It’ll tell you what to do next!
Keep going until you get one of the endings! Try not to freeze to death or get blown up!
Player Count Differences
Pretty much none! Just try to let everyone make some decisions from time to time! That’s only polite.
Strategy
- Don’t just … attack everyone. Good advice for life, too! There are definitely things that are good to attack and things that are bad to attack.
- Your choices may have far-reaching consequences. You might ostracize other people or get cool items that come in handy later or miss vital clues. It really leans into the point-and-click adventure of it all, as a result, so keep an eye out for things that seem important!
- Look and “listen” for clues. You’ll get a lot of hints as to what’s going on. Those hints are important!
- Most pieces of information you get are given to you intentionally, so try and figure out what you’re supposed to gain from them. The game doesn’t really have that much extraneous information, so if you’re being shown something or having your attention drawn to something, it stands to reason that there’s probably a reason for that.
- Being kind is generally its own reward, but there are extra benefits to not being a weirdo. Sometimes you need other people to like you to avoid bad things happening. Other times you want to rob people. You have to balance both of these things in order to play this game and to live in society.
- There’s plenty of missable things, so be careful. No worries if you miss something; you can always replay or go back to a previous objective if you want.
- Much like classic point-and-click games, having a lot of stuff is a good idea. It’s maximalism and we love to see it. But yes, generally, having stuff in your inventory is a good idea. Gives you options.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- I really like the box design! The cutouts go a long way, and they also have the added benefit of communicating that cutouts are going to be an important part of the game. It’s a nice bit of informed and functional design.
- I enjoy the panoramic scenes a lot. In general, I like multi-card panorama. It just looks really nice.
- This has a bit of a low-tech Chronicles of Crime feel to it, since you just flip the card around and use the cutout to read what happened as a result of your action. I like that you don’t have to have an app to do different actions; it makes the game better for travel or non-phone time. Sometimes I need to not look at screens; it’s rare, but it happens.
- It really hits a sweet spot on playtime. It’s about an hour, which is just about perfect.
- I like that the game is replayable either to try and get a better ending or to try it with someone new or loan it to a friend. I love the EXIT games, but having to destroy stuff stresses me out a bit. Better to be able to refill or rehome a game you’ve already played out. Not as good for the company, but better for the environment. Plus, this one is family-friendly enough that you can donate it to a school or library or something.
Mehs
- If the box were a little longer, it might be easier to pull cards out. Maybe I just have big fingers. Not sure. But it would be nice if I had a bit more wiggle room when flipping through the various cards of the deck.
Cons
- There’s nothing really to stop you from cheating, though, I mean, it’s your game; play it your way. I guess the problem with a low-tech approach is that you really can just read the backs of the cards (or sometimes accidentally spoil some things by seeing them when you’re searching for other cards). If you do that personally, I mean, I’m not going to judge you. Just make sure you don’t accidentally spoil your game experience doing so.
Overall: 8 / 10
Overall, I liked Backstories: Alone Under the Ice! I think it’s always nice to see new systems emerge in the escape room / narrative adventure / puzzle game space, and I’ve enjoyed new entries as such (except for that Deckscape: Team vs. Team one). It’s a bit of a bummer that some of these end up being flashes in the pan that I don’t get to see again (I miss you, Crime Zoom), but innovation and trial and error give us some pretty cool stuff from time to time. Here, the major new thing is having these cutouts on the cards so that you can only get snippets of what consequences your chosen action has. Is that novel? Yes! Does that entirely enable players to cheat by just looking at the back of the card? Also yes! But it’s your game; you can literally cheat as much as you want. That number can be none, too, and that’s fine. I enjoyed the narrative and that the game would explicitly call you out for having decidedly homicidal tendencies, as well. This is a family game, and they want to keep it that way. I think the biggest criticism of the game I can offer is that I wish that the box were a bit … longer? wider? whichever makes it easier to pull the cards out of the box. Sometimes you need card #40 or whatever and it’s hard to dig that out of the box. As you might guess, this is a pretty light criticism. But this is a nice entry point into the genre and the time commitment is light enough that you can try it out, have a blast, and then either keep it if you like it or pass it on to a friend to try. I love replayable games, though you may not personally want to do a replay since you’ll know most of the story unless you get a bad ending early. Either way, if you’re looking for an adventure, you enjoy a good narrative game, or you just want to whack some people with an ice pick in a family-friendly setting, Backstories: Alone Under the Ice might be a great fit for your next game night!
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