Publisher(s) Atlas Games Playing time | Players 2–6 Skill(s) required Storytelling | |
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Designer(s) Richard Lambert
Andrew Rilstone
James Wallis | ||
Once Upon a Time is a card game produced by Atlas Games, originally released in 1994 with a second edition published in 1995 and the current third edition in 2012. One object of Once Upon a Time is to tell a fairy tale as a group. While the story is developed by the whole group, the competitive aspect of the game is that each player has an individual goal of using all of the "Storytelling" cards he or she has in hand, and finishing the story with their own special "Happy Ever After" card. Only one player at a time is the current storyteller, giving him or her a chance to play their Storytelling cards, while the other players have a chance to "interrupt" the story and become the storyteller if, for example, the storyteller mentions something on one of the interrupting player's cards.
Contents
Gameplay
Each player is dealt a hand of cards that represent story elements: objects, people, events, and "aspects" often involved in fairy tales (for instance, there are cards for "crown", "key", "stepmother", "a death", "time passes", "sleeping", et cetera). These "Storytelling" cards represent ingredients of a fairy tale, i.e. words or phrases that are likely to appear in fairy tales. From a different deck of cards, each player is also dealt a single "Happy Ever After" ending card, to be kept secret from other players until it is used. The object of the game for each player is to use their cards in telling a story, finishing the story by using their Happy Ever After card.
One player at a time is the storyteller. (The 2nd edition rules suggest the starting storyteller could be the "player with the longest beard", or any other method upon which the players agree.) Whenever a story ingredient is mentioned, if any player has a Storytelling card for that ingredient, he or she can play it and become (or continue being) the storyteller. A player may be required to draw extra Storytelling cards (for example, when they are the storyteller and are interrupted by another player who becomes the new storyteller, or if he or she hesitates for too long while telling the story). If the storyteller ends the story with the ending on their Happy Ever After card, and is out of cards, he or she wins. Players are expected to cooperate (to some extent) in order to avoid contradictions in the story as it develops, for the story to make sense, and (according to the rulebook) that any ending to the story is "satisfying".
Expansions
Expansions contain 55 additional cards. 2nd Edition expansions include:
3rd Edition expansions include:
The 3rd edition also has a Writer's Handbook available, in trade paperback format.
Awards and critical reception
In his 2007 essay on the game in Hobby Games: The 100 Best, British author and game designer Marc Gascoigne stated that Once Upon a Time is "one of the best ways [he had] ever found to grab a non-gamer by their imagination and fling them into our world".
In 1999 Pyramid magazine named Once Upon a Time as one of The Millennium's Best Card Games and also as one of The Millennium's Most Underrated Games. Editor Scott Haring stated "the game's just as good for kids as it is for adults." Commenting on the second edition, reviewer Derek Pearcy said the game "is a brilliant example of what we should be getting in this new game market" and "not only is this game easy to learn, not only is it fast, fun, and an Idea Whose Time Has Come, but ... girls think it rocks" commenting upon "the occasional insulting lip-service [many game companies have paid] to their female readership."
Other awards include: