Lunch this week is FateFlip: Washed Ashore by Alley Cat / Red Cat games. It’s a game built upon the choose your own adventure mechanic and centres on you being the survivor of a shipwreck who has been ‘washed ashore’. The game is basically a deck of 68 double-sided cards split into three chapters that create the story and you interact with them. It’s a game I dip in and out of from time to time as I have yet to discover all 13 of the possible endings!
How it plays
There is a very small bit of set up, which includes separating some of the cards and assigning your resources for the first chapter. These are safety, energy and food which are shown by the neat use of the paperclips on one of the cards. Be warned! Should, during gameplay, either energy and food end up at zero you face dire consequences.
To play you simply have to navigate through the cards, each has a little text relating to the story and then the different options you can take. This usually means flipping card in a set direction depending on your decision. If you’ve played Palm Island or more lately Kingdon Legacy Feudal Kingdom then you’ll be familiar with the action. You can see it in the photo below, which is part of the first card of the story to avoid spoilers. Depending on your decision you’ll likely exhaust some of your resources, but hopefully gain items etc to aid your survival. Your aim is to make it to the end of chapter three.
Good for lunch?
The box states that each chapter should take around 35 minutes which makes it ideal for a lunchtime gaming fix, and given for the most part you simply have a small hand of cards it’s ideal both for portability and for playing at your desk. So tick tick there. You might find it a little annoying at first as there are a number of icons you need to know, and the instructions to the game are a little short (though fair play for trying to have a small instruction book!). As I said at the beginning of the review I dip into it every now and then as I know I have to yet to discover all the endings so from that point of view there is a certain level of replayability. However the more I play it the more I find myself led by what I have done previously i.e. I remember a decision so deliberately take the other path or knowing that taking path X will lead me to jeopardise a resource level I deliberately take the other path. I feel this impacts on my enjoyment of these further plays. That said, it is a small game deliberately designed as such and retails at a price similar to one shot type games so it’s understandable that there are some limitations. In that light for a bit of lunchtime escapism you can’t really go wrong.
Lunch time solo 