Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
Analog Spy Adventures
After dinner and a long work day, the idea of setting up a game can sometimes be daunting. Oftentimes, I find myself just diving into a video game, leaving my board game shelf lonely and unloved. But then some titles can alleviate that feeling. Backstories: The Emerald Wedding Anniversary offers a narrative experience with practically no setup or rules overhead.
The landscape of “choose your adventure/murder mystery” games is quite busy, ranging from Suspects: Claire Harper, Eternal Investigator, Alibi: 3 Intricate Mysteries, and Cold Case: End of the Line, to the popular Exit and Unlock! series. Backstories, from game designers Jules Messaud and Anthony Perone, takes a different spin, as players are resolving a mystery rather than solving a murder. This title comes second behind the first adventure, Backstories: Alone in the Ice.
The art by Cyrille Bertin, also known for the Unlock! titles, is instantly recognizable. Without spoiling the plot, the initial spy mission is to go undercover to retrieve nuclear launch codes from a bad actor. Players start in at the bad actor’s lavish anniversary party with multiple options to kick off the story.
Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept
Throughout the game, players can take on status effects (ranging from injured to being watched) and accumulate objects that could become useful at the right moment. The “panorama” is a set of up to six cards that lay out the landscape, where players can search, observe, or take other actions—a physical point-and-click interface.
Action cards have varying cutouts that can be matched to the backs of other cards. If there’s a match, players are instructed to resolve new cards, advancing the narrative. The game features multiple endings and can drastically change based on the timing and consequences of players’ choices.
How Compromised Are We?
I love branching storylines and choice-driven consequences. As a big video gamer, Baldur’s Gate 3 stands out as a perfect example of how no two playthroughs can be the same. Backstories: The Emerald Wedding Anniversary is another solid analog translation of that kind of system. It gave me the feeling of old-school point-and-click PC adventures, where you can try nearly every object in any situation. Some attempts lead to funny prompts, while others result in immersion-breaking roadblocks (like a character going on a long tangent about a high school rival).
I really enjoyed the sense of freedom as I navigated through the story. Since there’s no “natural” timer in the game, you can take your time matching objects to different people or situations and see if there’s something you missed.
The writing in this adventure was a lot better than in the first Backstories. The plot felt straight out of a Mission: Impossible movie—packed with high-octane action. The storyline also felt a bit more “believable,” as the motives and dialogue fit the situations more naturally. There were some tough decisions to be made, and in the end, you had to focus on the mission’s priority. Without giving too much away, the ending of the game was a rush while everything was falling apart. You just had to make it out somehow. Somehow. There were also some tests on morality and ethics along the way. Even when it felt like we’d reached the end of the road, the story kept going and we survived another card draw.
I felt this game also had a lot more red herrings, which I actually enjoyed. It was a funny “gotcha” to try and piece together a solution only to find out it was nothing but bunk.
Though we didn’t get the “best” ending, we still landed on a happy note. The game encourages you to reset and explore a different path, as a single playthrough only reveals about a third of the deck. It was also fun to skim through the unused cards afterward and see what opportunities we missed or what crises we avoided (or could have been avoided).
With its small box size and creative card-matching mechanics, I’m excited to explore more titles in the Backstories series. I’m really glad the second game ended up better than the first—I was ready to call it quits on the series. The writing and storylines were tighter, and I had a way more fun time acting as a secret agent. Fans of tactile mystery and meaningful choices: it’s a pulpy spy thriller worth hacking into.
Backstories: The Emerald Wedding Anniversary details
- Designer: Anthony Perone, Jules Messaud
- Artists: Gong Studios
- Publishers: La Boite de Jeu, Lucky Duck Games
- Release Date: 2024
- Player count : 1 - 6
- Age range : 12+
- Time range : 60 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Cooperative Game, Move Through Deck, Narrative Choice / Paragraph, Storytelling
- BGG Geek Rating: 7.88438 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 4.0.
- More articles about Backstories: The Emerald Wedding Anniversary.
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