Cartaventura Oklahoma

The Cartaventura series of games are a one to six player cooperative narrative card game. The games consist of a small box of square cards, plus some additional tokens which are used to tell a story. Cards are revealed, flipped, removed and used in a variety of ways to tell a compelling and sometimes harrowing story.

Some of the cards will be map cards in which you can travel to different locations, speak to different people and interact with the world in different ways. Can receive objects and items which may be need to interact with people or events later on in the game. The players will make decisions, travel around the world and eventually come to one of several endings, all within a relatively short period of time. As there are multiple endings the games can be replayed and different choices made to see how that effects the end outcome.

Cartaventura: Oklahoma is set in the wild west in 1854. You play as the 23 year old Bass Reeves. You were born a slave, the son and grandson of slaves and have been forced to work in the cotton and sugarcane fields. It tells the story of you trying to escape and finding your freedom. But where will the story take you, what will you do with your new found freedom and how will people react? The story is compelling, harrowing and sometimes heartbreaking. The story is yours to find out and discover.

Final Thoughts

The setting and story telling of Oklahoma is strong. Some of the conversations that you face can be quite hard to swallow, but Oklahoma deals with this in a very mature and respectful manner.

The core concept of the game is very interesting. From a simple deck of cards a story and narrative is told that makes you think and question what you should be doing. It gives you choices and options on how you want your story to pan out. I love the way the map expands and changes depending on your choices. You can gain items which you can use later on in the game when interacting with certain people and events.

I love the choices that you have in the game and how your decisions will change what cards are put out and the eventual ending. This gives the game a degree of replayability. There are not hundreds of different endings, but there is enough here to keep you coming back for several games. As the game progresses, and based on your actions, options may be closed off to you or new ones may open up.

All of the mechanisms in the game are very simple. The game is accessible and simple to play, yet is still very compelling and interesting. There is a very nice tutorial that explains all the cards/symbols etc and how to interact with them. There are no destructive elements in the game so you can simply reset it by placing all the cards in numerical order and try again. Overall game length states 60 minutes on the box but I have usually found that the games are a bit quicker, especially when you play solo. The player count does say up to six players but I feel that this is probably a bit too high. Although possible at the higher player counts, I have personally enjoyed this as a solo or two player game.