Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice

If your brother was missing, would you stop at anything to find him? Would you ask for help or steal anything that could help? You’ll have to make those decisions and more in Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice.

The Back Stories series are cooperative games for up to six players. Alone Under the Ice lasts around an hour and is best for players 10 and up. It was designed by Jules Messaud and Anthony Perone, and published by Lucky Duck Games.

Setup

Make sure you have room in the center of the table for building a tableau of cards in the Panorama area plus your objectives and player cards. Then grab Card #1 from the box, read it, and follow the instructions!

Gameplay

Back Stories, at its core, is a card-based Choose Your Own Adventure game. But rather than simply choosing between two options like the books we all remember, you’re interacting with the cards in one of the most creative mechanics I’ve seen.

The main mechanic to interact with the game is using Action cards that all have different notches cut out of them. Slide a card behind a Situation or Person card, then flip the card over to find out a result (if any).

You start out with three Action cards, “Search/Gather/Explore the area”, “Ask about your brother John”, and “Chat/Talk”. That’s because you are taking on the role of Sophie, John’s sister.

You are investigating your brother’s disappearance at his last known location, the Nid d’Aigle Refuge on Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps.

Throughout the game, you will use these and other Action cards to interact with people, objects, and areas around you in many different ways.

You’re trying to discover clues about your brother’s disappearance. But you’ll be thrust into a decades-old mystery dating back to World War II: the disappearance of the Amber Room. Can you save your brother AND uncover this lost treasure?

Impressions

When Andrew showed the rest of the Family Gamers team this mechanic at PAX Unplugged, I was blown away. I grew up reading Choose Your Own Adventure books, but this is next-level. You actually feel like you’re exploring and talking with people throughout the game.

There’s one other major impression shared by everyone I’ve played this with. As soon as we finished the game, we were ready to play again. Every time you make a decision, the game changes. There are so many branches you can go down throughout this game. Accordingly, there are several different endings.

You won’t uncover every card in the full deck if you only play once – you probably won’t even get close.

I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered a board/card game that puts you so in control of a story. You can try to befriend as many people as you can, or ignore them. When you find items that look like they could be of use, do you ask for them, or steal them? And you can improvise with tools to protect yourself from threats.

The depth of this game is incredible, and even if you find the best ending, you’ll still be itching to find hidden paths you missed the first time.

As a parent, I did have to be aware that this game contains violent situations. Some you may cause directly, some are a side effect of your well-meaning actions, and some you have no control over at all. Your character must deal with the consequences of violence and negative environments around you.

This is not a slow-moving exploration game with no tension. It is full of moments where you are desperately making decisions and worrying about that next card flip. But the violence never escalated to the point where I had to hide any of the cards from my kids.

It suffices to say, Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice is an incredible experience. Everyone on the Family Gamers team was eager to explore again after we completed our first playthrough. My 13-year-old son actually played through it again by himself after I played it with him.

These games aren’t destructible, so they also make a great game to pass on when you’ve worked through every option on your own.

If you are ready to tackle an adventure where your choices really matter, try Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice. You can get it from Lucky Duck Games, or ask for it at your friendly local game store.

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The Family Gamers received Back Stories: Alone Under the Ice from Lucky Duck Games for this review.