Flashback: Lucy – Looking Back, and Back, and Back!

Mysteries are inherently eerie. They may not turn out to be nefarious or diabolical, but the hint of the unknown always brings with it a feeling of unease. Sometimes this is quickly quelled, but even a silly experience like Flashback: Zombie Kidz still had some of this feeling associated with it.

In Flashback: Lucy, Scorpion Masqué didn’t bother calming your nerves, but leaned into creepiness instead of a light-hearted adventure. Flashback: Lucy is a cooperative game by Gabriel Durnerin, Baptiste Derrez, and Marc-Antoine Doyon. The box says it’s for 1-4 players, ages 8 and up, and that it plays in about 40 minutes.

Like Flashback: Zombie Kidz before it, it’s a story you gradually uncover more than it is a “game”. You’ll probably play this one with the lights on, and that’s OK. We review it here with as few spoilers as possible.

How to Play

Flashback: Lucy isn’t thematically related to Flashback: Zombie Kidz in any way, but it is very similar mechanically! Indeed, this game also has no turns or rounds. Everyone looks for clues and reveals cards until you’re ready to solve the mysteries of your current Chapter.

In Flashback: Lucy, you see the game world primarily from the perspective of Lucy Estrange, a teenager with special powers. Her aunt Alice left Lucy a strange mansion where unusual things seem to be taking place. To make things even more bizarre, when Lucy picks up items that were last touched by someone who disappeared, she sees a vision of that person’s last moments!

Open the box and read the introduction in the rulebook. Pull out all the large blue-backed cards for Chapter 1, and keep the small and large Special cards nearby.

Read the page for Chapter 1 and look for clues – then take the specified mini-card and begin your adventure.

You can check our review of Flashback: Zombie Kidz for the rest of the mechanics. We’ll cover additional pieces here.

The Graphic Novel

The first big change in Flashback: Lucy is the graphic novel. Throughout the game, you’ll be coming back to drawn panes of a story with some subtle clues as to what is going on. You’ll be given a narrative thread to follow, and you’ll immediately notice key parts of the pictures that will weigh into your next discovery. Specifically, you’ll see partial runes.

Runes

So what are these runes? A third kind of card in the game. Flashback: Lucy includes the full-size story cards, smaller question cards (both like in Zombie Kidz), and the new mini-cards with runes on the back.

Circled runes appear all over this adventure. Any time you see one, take the matching rune card. There are lots of different kinds of mini-cards. Some go into the slots on the page opposite the comic, while others reveal images that can overlay the comic, completing another rune to collect.

When you take a rune card, you may flip it over and look at it to discover what kind of card it is… Unless it has Greebo’s paw on it.

Greebo

Greebo is Lucy’s cat. If you take a rune card, but it has Greebo’s paw on it, slide it under the Greebo card instead of looking at it. You’ll reveal these cards when you’ve solved the chapter – this is usually how you’ll continue to the next one!

Hidden Mechanics

There are some more mechanics in the game that we won’t explain to you, you’ll have to find them for yourself. But trust us when we say that not everything is as it seems!

Once you’ve solved the mystery of what’s happening in Lucy’s house – and how it started – you’ll be ready to open the sealed page at the back of the book, with a satisfying ending to the story.

Impressions

Starting with the cover of the box, the art of Flashback: Lucy gripped us. We loved the introduction of the graphic novel to present the story in a logical fashion, and to anchor us to the narrative thread. Each memory in Zombie Kidz was supposed to connect to the previous one, but they felt too self-contained, which really hurt the experience. Here, each chapter gives a framework for how Lucy discovers more and more, and it made a huge difference with our kids.

In fact, after our experience with Flashback: Zombie Kidz, our kids weren’t terribly excited for Flashback: Lucy. But we convinced them to try the first chapter and they were HOOKED. We completed all four chapters in two sittings.

Warning for parents: This is a darker story. It has scary elements, and there is death. It isn’t gory or gross, but it is present in nearly every chapter. Although the box says 8+, we’d recommend 10+ just because of this content – But it’s very subjective to your judgement as parents.

Once again, Scorpion Masqué made excellent use of space, viewpoints, and even components… Our biggest issue with Flashback: Lucy was how quickly it was over. We want another one!

It’s also much easier to preserve Flashback: Lucy for replays, too. Although you won’t be able to replay it on your own, this is a title that is much easier to re-gift than Flashback: Zombie Kids was. And you’ll want to – everyone should enjoy the opportunity to learn more about Lucy and the house she now calls home.

Pick up your own copy of Flashback: Lucy directly from Scorpion Masqué, on Amazon, or at your friendly local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Flashback: Lucy from Scorpion Masqué for this review.

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