Game Review

Story Door and maybe
Heart Games for the Mind, LLC
PO Box 340 Accord, NY 12404
www.heartgames.com
each game $9.97
reviewed by Alan Irvine and others

Turning storytelling into an interactive game appears to be a popular idea these days. These two games (or two versions of the same game) are the third set of storytelling games we have reviewed in Works In Progress. They compare favorably to the others. Both Story Door and maybe consist of a deck of cards with images of people, places, events, and so on. The cards are bright and colorful, with imaginative images often bordering on the surreal. The designers obviously enjoyed preparing and playing with the images they used. Each deck comes with several cards of rules for over half a dozen different games, along with suggestions for using the decks to replace regular playing cards to transform traditional card games like rummy into storytelling events.

Of course, the true test of any game is the playing of it, so I gathered a couple of different groups — one of junior high kids, one of adults — to try out different versions of the games. I have included players’ comments throughout.

Both groups enjoyed the games. Everyone found the images provocative, leading to all sorts of odd twists and turns in our stories, often requiring some creative work by the storyteller of the moment. Cecile called it "a good exercise in imagination, because it really takes a lot of imagination to fit some of those cards in." We found that the competitive versions of the game, where each player earns points for each card they add to the story, did not work very well. The rules proved somewhat awkward, with some obvious loopholes. If you end the story you earn two or three times the points you would get for continuing it, so your obvious strategy is to end the story the first chance you get. Another problem surfaced as players faced the choice of playing a low scoring card that fit the evolving story or a high scoring card that did not. Everybody opted for the high score every time. Our adult group included a number of ardent gamers who quickly started suggesting ways to fix the various problems. Amy, for example, suggested taking out half the Love cards (the cards that allow you to end the story) or cutting their point value in half so that it becomes more difficult and less tempting to end the story. And the instruction cards do, in fact, encourage this sort of creativity in coming up with your own versions of the game. In the non-competitive versions, where the objective was simply to tell a story (or when we simply lost track of keeping score) the game flowed easier. Indeed, players often enjoyed the story so much that cries of dismay greeted the appearance of a Love card and the story’s end.

Both groups of players also found a number of design flaws with the actual cards. We often had trouble reading the label on a card, which is a problem since it is not always apparent from the image what a card is supposed to represent. Ginger commented that "the words are hard to read. The red [printing] on the border is hard to make out." I also found the green printing on a purple border difficult to read. Dave complained that "the printing should be bigger." Greg noted that "the cards are in different configurations, which is confusing." (Some cards are printed vertically, some horizontally.) As score keeper I found it almost impossible to figure out how many points some of the cards were worth. And all of the kids found the Love cards confusing. They thought that "Love" meant that you had to end the story with characters falling in Love. Kelly insisted (several times) "they should really change that Love card. I got really confused." Of course, you can get around some of these problems by once again adapting the rules. (Can’t read the point values? Then don’t keep score.)

Despite the glitches, everyone enjoyed the games. Both groups of players contained ardent fans of the game Once Upon A Time, (reviewed in our Winter 1998 issue.) Although I did not explicitly ask anyone to compare the games, comparisons did, inevitably, come up. Once Upon A Time was generally seen as the more exciting game, good for competitive storytelling. Story Door and maybe were better for quieter, more cooperative story building exercises; for playing with ideas and images.

In the end, we all liked the cards. They are marvelously creative, wonderful even for just flipping through, letting the images spark ideas. They are flexible enough to allow for all sorts of games and variations. As Ginger commented, "it’s fun that you can play the game in a lot of different ways." She also suggested that it is "a great game for in the car or with kids." Perhaps Beth summed it up the best. When asked for her comments, she said simply, "I’d buy it."

—published summer 1999