Second Look—StoryLine: Fairy Tales

Take a popular party-game mechanic, turn it into a kids game with a fairy tale theme, and you’ve got StoryLine: Fairy Tales, the first in what I’m guessing will be a line of StoryLine games. I was a bit skeptical of this one, but had a great time playing it with my kids

Storyline comes with 30 Narrator cards that cover two different stories. Then there’s 100 story cards, 20 each of 5 different types. Each turn a different player takes the role of Narrator and flips over a Narrator card for the story they’re playing. The card will dictate what type of cards the players need to play to continue the story. Each player starts with one of each of the five card types, and will also draw an extra of the type needed for the round. Then the players each play the appropriate card face down. The Narrator chooses a card, and whoever played that card gets a token.

The tokens are the only part of the game I’m not 100% on board with. If it were as simple as the player with the most tokens wins, then that’d be fine. That’s not the case. Tokens are awarded to players face down. Some are worth 1, 2, or 3 points. Others have special rules, like a boot that’s worth nothing or a crown that lets you take 2 more tokens to score. This means that a player with the least amount of tokens can still pull a win with a lucky hand of tokens. My kids were kind of upset with this too. It seems a bit too random, and was a bit of a buzz-kill at the end of the game.

Overall we had fun. The cards are beautiful, the gameplay simple, and there’s some pretty funny card combinations that can take a more traditional Fairy Tale and really turn it on its head. We may just stick with counting actual tokens, and not using the points and special token powers.

A copy of StoryLine: Fairy Tales was provided free for review by Asmodee