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As the great philosopher, RuPaul Charles once said, reading is fundamental. In time for this year’s World Book Day, we’ve decided to focus on games that are story-driven. Here is a collection of some of our favourites!
Arkham Horror – Sophie Jones
It’s late at night and you are held up in your study, researching bloody disappearances which have been happening in the region. Yet, as you research, you begin to hear chanting coming from the parlour. As you go to investigate, the study door has vanished. You hear scratching beneath you. Like something is digging its way up. You must find a way to escape before it’s too late.
The beginning of Arkham Horror grips you instantly. You are merely an investigator trying to solve a case when you get caught in the middle of supernatural shenanigans. As you try to escape your home you soon discover that all is not right. With ghouls spawning in the cellar and fog appearing from thin air, it’s clear you may not survive the night. It’s enthralling and extremely well crafted.
For those not familiar with Arkham Horror, it is a roleplaying cooperative card game. With a core set you can play solo or with a companion. Players will traverse rooms, find clues, battle monsters, and gain cards upon levelling up. Along the way, you will read Act and Agenda cards which will progress the story. Depending on your choices, these cards will offer different endings. Once you have finished the base game, you can pick up expansions to continue the riveting campaign.
Arkham Horror’s rich world is heavily influenced by H.P Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Not only is the game a champion of narrative gameplay but it also celebrates one of the best horror writers. Consequently, this makes Arkham Horror the perfect game to play this World Book Day. Will you be able to survive the horror?
Cartaventura – Favouritefoe
World Book Day on 3 March is a cause of celebration in our house. Not just because many years ago I co-wrote a kiddie’s book of my own. We are a bunch of bookworms and losing ourselves amidst the pages is a common occurrence. As such, games that have a story element to them are always a hit for us.
Cartaventura from BLAM! is a series of choosing your own adventure games which can be played solo or co-operatively. They are narrative-driven and use a simple deck of 70 square cards to take you along a series of immersive journeys. In Lhasa, the connection is double. It is a story-based game about an ancient book. You play first world war who stumbles across a mysterious tome about ancient philosophy. It is designed to bring peace and wisdom to those who follow it, so you definitely want to know more. Setting off with adventure in your heart, you go in search of the author, Alexandra David-Neel.
The rules of the game are very simple. You just flip a card and then decide what to do based on the card type and options available. These could be Maps, Objects, Actions etc. As the game progresses, your decisions take you along different paths and meet different characters, until you reach the end. Cartaventura Lhasa is a great, portable, easy to play game. The way we get drawn into the story really surprised us in a good way. I really like the fact there is a historical background leaflet included in the game. The cards are also small enough to not make this game a table hogger. For a budget-friendly, replayable adventure game (5 different endings), I think this is an excellent choice. And with 2 more in the series to play, it’s a collection that could be as at home on the bookshelf as the game shelf
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective – Hannah Blacknell
The most quintessentially British detective has to be Sherlock Holmes from Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. Sherlock is a cantankerous genius who is rather too pompous in his looking down on everyone else, and yet we all seem to love him. His insistence that everything can be worked out just by simple deduction baffles almost everyone, but then that is half his charm!
There are a bunch of games based on Sherlock. He is one of my favourite characters in Unmatched Cobble and Fog, the title hero in Sherlock 13 and a plethora of others. The game that, for me, really captures the story of this infamous detective is Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective.
In this game, you will need to piece together the evidence (once you have collected it) to solve the crime. Scoring is based on how many correct answers you get to the questionnaire at the end, and how many clues you need to get there. You get given a map of Victorian London, where each location is given a code that refers to the storybook for each case. You travel around London speaking to witnesses and experts and visiting places of interest to garner snippets of information to help you in your quest. You scour the newspapers to get a lead and direct your thinking.
There is a load of different boxes, each containing 10 unique cases. So far, I have tried the Thames Murder cases, there is also a Jack the Ripper box, and a brand new one coming out this year, Bureau of Investigations. This is a social event as much as it is a game, and we LOVE it.
Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion – Rob Wright
Now here’s a game that covers at least two bases of World Book Day – its story-based AND plays from a book!
For all those unfamiliar with the phenomenon of Gloomhaven, this was/is a massive game in a massive box that requires a massive undertaking/commitment. For all those who have the money, space, and time (Gallifreyans) this is all well and good. But for us mere mortals who lack all of those things but still yearn for adventure (those who haven’t taken an arrow in the knee), we could do with something a little more… manageable.
This is where Jaws of the Lion comes in, an introduction both to the worlds and mechanics of Gloomhaven that is a game in its own right. Best played with a full four (all four characters have their own specialities) it is a campaign-based strategy game with roleplaying features. Your characters develop over time, gaining abilities and equipment as their experience grows whilst facing more challenging missions and monsters. The combat is card-based, so there’s less likelihood of critical fails and unfair attacks. The system of using cards to complete actions does put a very definite time limit on each session.
There’s a map to put stickers on to show your progress through the game, but the action takes place within a book. You open to the relevant page and this gives you the map, set up and win conditions for the mission. If you’ve played the likes of Stuffed Fables or Comanauts, you will be familiar with this format, but I still think it’s a pretty nifty and compact way of doing things.
It also gives you a taste of its big brother and your characters can be ported across. I mean… what could possibly go wrong?
Stuffed Fables – Craig Smith
There’s something incredibly gripping about story-driven games. Whether it’s solving one more mystery or completing one more mission, they have a hook that keeps you coming back from more. One of the most charming of these is Stuffed Fables.
Each person plays as a stuffy, who bravely protects a girl in her transition from sleeping in her cot to her bed. There are seven stories to play in total, each in the gloriously produced book which doubles as a game board. On a player’s turn, they draw a hand of dice, each allowing their stuffy to carry out actions. You can fund stuffing, which gives the stuffy life. You can carry out outranged or melee attacks. You can also search for items that will help you in your fight against the Lord of Nightmares. You can even donate stuffing to your team, as well as encourage them by donating a die to them. Everything about this game is adorable (except for the hideous monsters). You can communicate with lost toys, as well landing on points of interest which further bring the story to life. It’s a completely immersive experience.
As the theme of this year’s World Book Day is ‘you are the reader’, Stuffed Fables fits perfectly. Each player is encouraged to take it in turns to be the bookkeeper, and the story is written in such a way that you’ll be creating voices for all the characters before you know it.
As a child, I was told that the average person ate four spiders in their sleep during their lifetime. I don’t think I slept for about three weeks afterwards. If only I had a group of brave stuffed toys ready to bat those creatures away from me!