Weaving Fate
This is a spoiler free review, but I will comment on some of the things the game will tell you during the set up to give you a feel for the game’s tone.
The TL;DR
Single play, no real replay value and feels like more of an event
Great co-op, involves everyone while pushing against alpha
Set up and rules very welcoming
Generates real discussion and an attempt to unravel the story
Just the once
Undo: Cherry Blossom Festival is a new type of single play game from Pegasus Spiele, but unlike other single play games this one doesn’t require that you destroy any of the components, meaning once you’re done, you can hand this off to friends to enjoy.
This does of course make every play of this game a one off experience and who you play with could be as much of a deciding factor about your enjoyment as the game itself.
I played in a group of four, another couple joined my wife and me on our adventure across Japan. Though the game says it can play 2-6 I suspect quieter players might be drowned out at higher counts and at lower counts ideas might not flow as freely. We didn’t include this as part of a longer gaming session which I think helped; we got together for dinner, chatted for a while, then played this game and I felt like this was the perfect setting for it.
How to
The box contains two decks of cards; large and small, sorted into the correct order. The first few cards of the larger deck take you through all of the set up really well asking you to lay things out before taking you to the next step and weaving into the start of the story as it goes. This rules approach and the simplicity of the components makes it very easy to approach and welcoming to non-gamers.
The concept of the game is pretty simple; someone has died and you’re traveling to different moments in their life to try and unpick the reasons behind their death. While doing so you’re giving them subtle nudges, hoping to change the outcome and undo their death. This gives it hints of murder mystery, but also a little of the feeling of Quantum Leap, both of which I really enjoy.
To play, you lay out the possible locations (large cards) including an additional clue (small cards) for each one face down; these have dates and locations as well as the name of the additional clue, all of which can give you some sense of the information that might be included.
Finally you read out the scene of the person’s death. This includes details of their appearance, some of the items present and you're then instructed to look at the additional clue for this location giving you a sense of how these cards work. From there you're ready to start playing.
The action
Taking it in turns, each player will then choose a new moment in the deceased’s life. While the game is keen to encourage all voices at the table and a collaborative approach it is very clear that the final decision rests with the active player. While this doesn’t stop alpha players, the way it's laid out does discourage them.
Once you’ve decided where to go, you flip over the large card and read it aloud. The card typically sets a scene and then presents you with multiple options; A, B or C for how you might change the outcome. If desired you can also spend a limited number of magnifying tokens to view the clue as well. Even with all this information it may not be clear what the right option is and we discussed backward and forwards on several occasions.
This was for me the essence of the game; it encourages you to come up with multiple versions of the story of the deceased’s life to guide your actions, and it does a great job of presenting options that could unfold in different directions.
When a consensus has been reached (or the active player makes the decision) you reveal the matching A, B or C card from a separate deck to see if your action has a positive, neutral or negative impact on the deceased’s life. Even if you’ve made things worse though, this revelation is really useful as it helps you with future decisions.
Once you’ve visited nine of the twelve locations the game ends and you calculate how successful you were in preventing the person’s demise. If you’re successful you can then go on to read the full explanation of what had happened and the key moments on the timeline, or if unsuccessful you could re-visit the story trying to improve the result (I’m not convinced this would be particularly satisfying).
Conclusion
During our game we were very successful but hadn’t registered all the details of the story though we had the core of it correct, in fact we’d only been to one of the key moments, so we were very happy to have the details filled in.
Overall this was a game I really enjoyed and was an excellent conclusion to a lovely evening. I hope the other Undo games are as well written and developed as I will be looking to play them soon.
Note that I was given a free copy of this game for the purposes of providing a review.
