YORKTON - It’s always interesting how some games are received once on The Meeple Guild table.
Take for example The Plot Thickens: Detective Edition released in 2023 from Bright Eye Games and designers Mike Callahan, Brigette Indelicato, and Thomas Rochelle, which is a storytelling game that most certainly is not a genre we have gravitated too. In fact, amid the piles of games in our collectives various game rooms, you would not find another storytelling game – although admittedly it’s not a ‘genre’ which boasts long lists of game choices.
The object here is for players to take their hand of story cards -- people, places and things -- and lay out the tale of your character, and their fate.
If you happen to have watched an improvisation troupe on TV take a word from someone in the audience and run with creating a story – well this is essentially the same thing for gamers at their gaming table.
This is a game which draws upon the inner story-teller of the players, something some of us probably did not know we had lurking inside.
The ‘stories’ earn points – more points if you can interact with the stories of others at the table – The Plot Thickens plays three or four.
So if you can have your ‘student’ visit the zoo already in someone else’s story it’s a good thing.
Now admittedly the stories created – at least at our table – were rather superficial in nature, with the right group it is likely some deeper and far more interesting stories would be created. (As an aside The Plot Thickens would be a great game for a writer’s group to play, where they could actually create a story, putting what they create on paper. It might even be a handy tool for an individual to have fun using cards drawn randomly to create short stories.)
But back to the actual game, it was one that we collectively weren’t expecting to like a lot, and yet it turned out to be a lot more fun than anticipated. Certainly we weren’t taking this one very seriously, so it was a night of smiles, and laughter as the stories we created were generally just awful.
The process however was a good one.
This is not a top of the gaming heap game, but in a fun social setting, or just for something outside the norm, The Plot Thickens is a fun choice that wouldn’t make the game table regularly, but for certain fun occasions it would be a fine choice.
Oh yes, and with this one you don’t exactly win, but rather sort of co-win.
The storyteller with the most points gets to craft the ending as main character, which can be more of a challenge than a win, while the person who connected the most to their cards gets to name the epic as the author – which writers often find difficult to do.
The Plot Thickens was not an obvious choice, but in the end The Meeple Guild was smiling.
