SNAP Review – Back Stories: The Emerald Wedding Anniversary

WARNING: This game contains depictions of violence. We’ve included some pictures from the game to help you decide if this is appropriate for your family.

Hey Andrew, do you remember when we played Back Stories with our other writers?

I do! It was right after we got it at PAX Unplugged. We played the first Back Stories, Alone Under the Ice – and it was awesome!

Well, Back Stories is – back, with another adventure. This time we get to be spies!

Game

Back Stories is a series of escape-room-like cooperative games for up to six players. They’re designed by Jules Messaud and Anthony Perone and published by Lucky Duck Games.

This one, The Emerald Wedding Anniversary, says that it’s a medium difficulty and appropriate for all audiences age 12 and up.

Art

All right. So, let’s talk about the art in this game.

It’s sort of a comic-book style of illustration – in fact, some story sequences are told through panel comics on the cards – and I actually think it adds to the story in all the right places.

There IS some violence in this story, but there’s nothing gory in the illustrations.

Mechanics

So, let’s talk about the mechanics.

Back Stories is basically a choose-your-own-adventure game using cards. It has an incredibly cool mechanic of “action cards” with slots or notches cut in them. Put the action card on the BACK of the card you want to interact with, then turn the whole thing over and see what lines up with the window – if anything.

From the very beginning of this game, you’ll have a card representing our protagonist, Agent Nyx. As you make choices, you’ll need to slide status cards under this character. Future events may reference these statuses and change the outcome of some of your decisions.

The Emerald Wedding adds some neat features we didn’t see in Alone Under the Ice, like these cool transparent cards which allow you to augment your character, like these sweet glasses.

I want glasses like that.

As you work through the game, you’ll interact with other characters in this world of spies and intrigue. You’ll never know who to trust or what the best course of action is; and you’re just going to have to guess. Many of the choices you make, might close off opportunities to make different choices.

Work through the game and complete your mission, to see one of five* different endings. Don’t like how the story ended? Reset the deck of cards and try again, to see the result of making different choices!

Expectations

So Anitra, what did we expect from this game?

Well, as we mentioned at the top, we loved Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice. You can see the written review at the link below.

We expected that The Emerald Wedding Anniversary would be a little harder than Alone Under the Ice. But as the mission is introduced, we are informed that “Secret Agent Nyx, you do not have a ‘license to kill’ “. So we assumed that there would be some violence, but no more than what was in Alone Under the Ice.

None of our kids played the first BackStories at that PAX Unplugged AirBnB. But we knew how much fun WE had, and hoped all of our kids would be willing to try this one too.

Surprises

So Anitra, what surprised us about Back Stories? Especially with our kids.

It was a little tough to get our oldest to play. She’s more interested in light games with simple themes, and she’s pretty tired of escape rooms.

But once we got her to try it, she was immediately hooked into the story. She had this to say:

[Claire] “I felt a lot of anxiety playing this game. But it was easier than other escape rooms. Instead of puzzles, there was a lot of action. And we just had to decide the next step of what to do. I think it’s my favorite escape room type game.”

And then our youngest was also a little reluctant to start. But when we were finished, he said:

[Elliot] It was excellent!

Asher didn’t take any persuading, but the game still surprised him, too.

[Asher] It was simpler than I expected it to be. It was really enjoyable, and I like it more than a lot of the other escape room games we’ve played. It was more like a choose-your-own-adventure. And I loved that!

Truthfully, even at a medium difficulty, the puzzles here just weren’t that difficult. And that’s fine! The goal here is more about making good decisions for the sake of the plot, not so much about solving tricky puzzles.

Our only negative surprise was that there was some vulgar language in the text, and some paths in the story get very violent – although they are still not depicted graphically.

Recommended?

So, do we recommend this game?

You heard our kids – they really enjoyed this adventure. I think the age on the box is just about right – it says 12+ and I probably wouldn’t play this with kids much younger, due to the subject matter. Parents might want to do the reading out loud on these cards, so that you can edit on the fly.

We give Back Stories: The Emerald Wedding Anniversary 4½ secret identities out of 5.

You can find it at LuckyDuckGames.com, on Amazon [soon], or look for it at your friendly local game store.

And that’s BackStories: The Emerald Wedding Anniversary – in a SNAP!

* We miscounted. There are at least seven different possible endings. Go Back

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The Family Gamers received a copy of BackStories: The Emerald Wedding Anniversary from Lucky Duck Games for this review.

SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?