Friday Filler: Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice

High up Mont Blanc stands the Refuge du Nid d’Aigle, a shelter considered to be the starting point for the royal route up the mountain. Here is where you last heard from John, your brother, a letter you received two weeks ago. In the letter he promised to call you in a few days, but never did. However, he also revealed that he had made an incredible discovery. This was a clue to the location of one of the greatest missing treasures from the end of World War 2—the Amber Room. Often considered to be a candidate for the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’, the amber panels of the room, backed with gold leaf and mirrors, was looted from the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg by the Nazis, taken to Königsberg on the Baltic coast and there lost from history! Now your brother knows where the Amber Room might be and that there are people after him. Is John simply missing? Has he been kidnapped? Is he even alive? And does he really know anything about the location of one of the greatest missing treasures of all time? And from the too few clues that he has given you, can you find John before it is too late?

This is the set-up for Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice. Published by La Boîte de Jeu, it is a storytelling game that is very much like a ‘Choose Your Adventure’ book or a ‘Click & Point’ computer adventure in which the story is told by proceeding through a deck and making choices when prompted. However, although it may possess the playstyle of a ‘Choose Your Adventure’ book or a ‘Click & Point’ computer adventure, Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice is not necessarily a solo game. It is designed to be played by between one and six players, aged ten and over, and in an hour or less. Thus, it can be played solo, but it can also be played co-operatively, with the players deciding together what the heroine of the story—Sophie—will do in each scene and location, the current cards being laid out in front the players for everyone to see and examine. Yet unlike a ‘Choose Your Adventure’ book or a ‘Click & Point’ computer adventure, there is no random factor in Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice. No dice to roll as in a solo adventure book or clicking a button in a computer game. All of it what happens as Sophie searches for her brother is down to the players, the choices they make, and the consequences of those choices.

Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice consists of a deck of one-hundred-and-twenty-eight cards. The cards are large, full colour, double-sided, numbered between one and one-hundred-and-twenty-eight, and played through in order starting with one and moving through card by card. Of course, depending on the players’ choices, they will not see every card in the deck on a single play though. They are likely to skip over whole sections of the deck as determined by their choices. The cards come in six types. The purple cards are Character, Objective, and Ending cards. These represent Sophie and what she wants to do. The green Clue cards give information about a situation or a challenge. The yellow Story cards move the adventure on. The dark blue Situation cards depict items, locations, or people. Often they can be arranged together to form larger scenes. The light blue Action cards are what Sophie can do and in the game they are used to interact with the Situation cards. They form the key mechanical part of play and come in two types. The ‘Window’ cards have a rectangular hole cut in them and text indicating the action, such as ‘Search Gather Explore the area’, whilst the ‘Notch’ cards have notches cut into the side. The red ‘Status’ cards indicate Sophie’s current condition, such as ‘Sophie is weak’ or ‘Frozen’.

At the start of Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice, the player takes the top card off the deck, turns it over. This is card number one. He reads it and follows the instructions. Initially, this will be to draw the next set of numbered cards. They are placed on the table so that everyone can see the current Objective card; the Action cards available and thus, what Sophie can do in the scene; and the Situation cards that show what Sophie can see. These are areas on the table known as the Objective area, Player area, and Panorama area, respectively. Once the cards are in front of them, the players debate and decide what they want Sophie to do, choosing an Action card to combine with a Situation card. When this happens, the player takes the Action card and slides it behind the chosen Situation card. He then picks up the two cards—Action and Situation—together and turns them over. Most of the reverse of the Situation card will be hidden apart from what can be seen through the window or notch of the Action card. The window will reveal information, whilst the notch will show a number indicating the code for a lock or another Situation card that the players must now consult.

For example, Sophie has arrived at the Refuge du Nid d’Aigle. This is card one. It tells her which cards to draw and place on the table. They include several Action cards and several Situation cards. Card eight states, ‘Someone is waiting upstairs in the lobby’, and depicts a young man leaning against a bar. The players decide that they want to talk to the young man, but cannot decide between the simple ‘Chat Talk’ Action card or the ‘Ask about your brother John card’. After a quick debate, they select the ‘Chat Talk’ Action card as it is not confrontational. The player picks up the ‘Chat Talk’ Action card, which is card five and slides it behind the ‘Someone is waiting upstairs in the lobby’ card or Card eight. When the player turns the two cards over, he can read the text and the clue that is not covered. The players are free to use as many Action cards as they want, but each one and the consequences that follow, must be completed before another action can be attempted.

Initially, most of the actions the player will be directing Sophie to take will involve talking and asking questions, but as play proceeds, other Action cards and actions become available. Sophie also has opportunities for theft and violence, the latter when she picks up/steals an ice pick—which then has its own Action card—though resorting to such methods will probably get her hurt or mistrusted, depending on the action. Yet there are also some utterly amazing Action cards and thus actions that come about due to particular circumstances, such as ‘Feel around using your hands’ when Sophie is in the pitch dark or ‘Match×1’ which she can strike to reveal where is in the darkness!

Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice is not a challenging game (or puzzle?) to play, certainly not in terms of the rules or mechanics, and is not too challenging in terms of the story. In fact, the publishers rate the difficulty at two out of five. The simplicity of play and the standard sequence of card numbers means that Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice is also easy to set back up again. So, if the players fail the first time, they can set it back up and try again and start looking for other clues and interesting ways to interact in a different way with the locations and people within the mystery. Even when the players do solve the mystery and find John, there is nothing to stop them resetting the game and examining other clues to find out where they might lead Sophie. That said, with just one-hundred-and-twenty-eight cards and a difficulty of two out of five, subsequent playthroughs are not going vary too widely, though of course, the endings probably will.

Physically, Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice comes in a small, but solid box. The cards are all glossy and full of vibrant colour, whilst the artwork on them is excellent. The rules are clearly explained, though the text on the cards might be a little small for some readers.

Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice is a solo adventure book in a box, with the cards replacing the paragraphs and giving the mystery a pleasing physicality that twists the tension a little as the players slide an Action card behind a Situation card in the hope of getting a good clue. This is a game that people are going to want to play and play again until they have solved the mystery at its heart and if they have played it in a group, they are likely to want to try it again, playing alone this time. However, once the mystery is solved, there is relatively little need to play again. Except, that is, if a player wants to introduce it to a new group, because although it has a slightly longer playing time of an hour, the combination of the game play’s simplicity and tension with the intrigue of the mystery, means that it works as an ice breaker game as well. That simplicity plus the mystery means it works as a family game as well.

Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice packs a good mystery, excellent artwork, and clever play into its solid little box.