“Villagesong” and more: Table-Tested Reviews of all Littleboxes
Published by Storybrewers Roleplaying, there are four card- and prompt-based games known as Littleboxes. These are no-prep and GM-less games with a focus on telling heartfelt stories. I’ve played all of them more or less extensively in the past month and am happy to report my experiences with them!
Villagesong
“Villagesong” is a game about leadership and change, a game about an island with multiple villages and their leaders, about their own story, their interactions with the other villages and how they will be remembered. It’s strongly prompt-based and in my game considerably more than half of the time was spent talking out of character. Which isn’t good or bad in particular, just an observation.
Everyone will choose a leader and a village to play from premade options. Our impression was that some leaders have a stronger (or at least easier to understand) identity than others, which made some of them easier to play than others. This is also something that gets better after a few sessions, as everyone gets to know the different characters better.
When ending the game there are some really neat ending scenes and rituals to do, which I greatly enjoyed.
By default, the game supports 2 to 4 players with a QR code leading to solo rules in A4 format (10 pages). But multiplayer is where Villagesong shines. The game plays somewhat different depending on the number of players - playing with two (and to a degree, three) players is the most personal, while having four players introduces a new dynamic - there will be one village you don’t interact with mechanically, which adds a new and interesting layer to the story.
The solo version is a nice impression of the game without making you write down that much - which is a pro and a con at the same time. I caught myself mentally skipping over a lot of things that could have been fleshed out more and writing things down doesn’t really add to the experience, either. There are a great many things to make up so this is where the multiplayer variant shines, with multiple people being able to riff off each other. The solo version needs the A4 booklet to work (the variant rules are easily remembered, but there’s also prompts that need to be referenced again and again) and it’s kind of a bummer to have such a refined card game need printed out instructions. The mechanics play out a lot neater in multiplayer than they do in solo mode. They still work, but they're definitely not as elegant.
There are multiple setups that influence the story being told. The prompts in the starter scenario “The Island” were comparatively vanilla, while scenarios like “Art of War” brought a lot more juicy drama and conflict to the island. Having four different scenarios (and being able to mix and match even more) makes this highly replayable. There were some minor hiccups with the mechanics when playing “Art of War” and keeping a Rebellion card in your hand until after the Rebellion has ended, but all things considered this was easily resolved/ignored.
Another thing I somewhat struggled with is knowing the exact number of cards needed when setting up the game and if your deck is missing any cards (or you overlooked one while building the deck) you need to know how the game works to fix it, as there is no “you need x cards in the deck” info anywhere, just “take these and remove 1”. I often had moments where it was unclear if there is the right amount of cards in the deck. To be fair, worst case you can just slip another card or two into the deck when the need arises.
Overall this is a strong game that swings between wholesome and juicy drama. It’s also the one that felt the most hackable to make your own thing with it and I’m curious to see future games based on this (especially Jadara for those who speak German).
Our Mundane Supernatural Life
In “Our Mundane Supernatural Life” you’ll be playing two people living together - one of them a magical creature and one of them a regular human. This can be a romantic relationship, but the game also suggests them being friends or family. In our first game we were demon-grandma and her chess-obsessed grandson.
Of all Littlebox games one of the easiest ones to get into mechanically, although it has major focus on storytelling and improv, which can be intimidating to people new to the hobby or story games. The gameplay loop is first creating your daily schedule and then playing through each entry of that schedule. You roll how long each scene is going to be (1d4+1 minutes, so 2-5 minutes each) and see if your scene will have something going wrong. Then you set the scene real quick, start the timer and start roleplaying!
It’s an interesting mechanic to make players roleplay for a specific amount of time, no matter if you’re done or running out of interesting things to say. It’s a game about slices of life and routines. At least until something goes horribly wrong and you need to redo the kitchen before your grandson comes home and sees the mess you’ve made.
There’s a few different ways to play the game: per default it’s a single day being played out, but there are also rules for three days and expanded prompts on how the tasks at hand will go. This adds a bit more depth to your game and will also make it run a bit longer of course.
It’s a cute little game if you have an hour or so. It can be highly personal, so I would only play this with a partner or very close friends, not bring it to a convention. But the niche it fills, the game fills well.
Decaying Orbit
“Decaying Orbit” is a game created in response to the game “For the Queen”. Instead of the queen and the people revolving around her this game revolves around a space station presently hurtling towards a sun and the events that led to its downfall. Everyone will be playing as the AI of that space station and answer prompts about the memories about the events that led up to this moment.
This was for me both the hardest and the easiest game at the same time. The mechanics are very simple (build the deck, read cards aloud, answer prompts, ask questions), but the prompts are often extremely vague and need a lot of genre familiarity to be answered with confidence. I found myself riffing off of the many many sci-fi TV shows I’ve seen in my life, while other players sometimes struggled to work with the prompts. Roleplaying an AI is also awesome and difficult at the same time. You can use a lot of creative things as a vehicle for the story (sensor readings, terminal outputs, etc.) but we often found ourselves defaulting to camera footage - which is fine, but especially those without a technical background were missing a bit of guidance, like a cheat sheet card or something.
If you do have a group that’s into sci-fi and possibly some story game experience, it’s a pretty cool game, though. It’s very atmospheric and the scenes created can be extremely cool. It’s a game that’s extremely easy to take seriously and sessions were always intense and in-genre.
One major drawback that’s more of a piece of advice I have: players need to be bold about making decisions about the story being told. The game encourages “corrupting” memories and players tend to use it to keep the tension about what exactly happened. When used too much this leads to the threat not being established enough until the end of the game. Be bold. Make decisions. “Enhance” those memories. Trust the other players to roll with it.
Saltfish & Almanacs
In “Saltfish & Almanacs” you’re playing as one to four traders on their nine-month journey of selling their goods (and the winter until you start over again next year). This is my favourite of all four Littlebox games and a wonderful example of collaborative storytelling. It has a lot going on, the setup almost feels boardgame-y, but the gameplay is extremely narrative, character-driven and encourages roleplay easily. It’s on the longer side for a prompt-based roleplaying game, but it never felt like it was dragging. We were able to tell a compelling and cohesive story that felt profound and heartfelt (and had some juicy drama going on).
The themes shift a little, depending which merchant company you choose to play as. The “Hearthfire Traders” (a big family) are especially wholesome, the “Mersiatic League” (a big company, currently in debt) place more importance on the business side of the game, the “Venturis Collective” (a group of young entrepreneurs) are something in between while placing a highlight on younger characters and the “Spiritfolk Travellers” (a group of folklore creatures) make the magical aspect of the game stand out all the more.
The game plays a bit different depending on the number of players you have. In a one- to three-person game you’ll also use “Special Items and Travellers” that you can interact with while on the road alone, while in a four-person game you’ll only interact with each other while in between settlements. Neither is better or worse than the other, just different. The mechanics of the game are extremely neat and play out especially well when playing with two to four people - in solo mode there are some things that feel just a tad bit clumsier than in multiplayer. That is not to say that I didn’t enjoy solo mode - it’s still a solid solo game. It doesn’t make you write down anything, just move your little tokens across the board while thinking about your character’s story, which I enjoyed a lot.
It’s often a bit of an exercise in empathy, in a very good way. It makes you create a character that’s different than yourself and put yourself in their shoes on an emotional level, more than I’ve done in many other roleplaying games.
It’s a wholesome game that I would consider a great introduction to story games in general and will probably become my go-to for cozy brunch games.
Conclusion
I greatly enjoyed playing these games and I was impressed how each of them brought something new to the table. Every box has something special about it, extra stuff to use. Some of them more than others, though - while “Saltfish & Almanacs” is chock full with tokens and even meeples, and “Our Mundane Supernatural Life” also including a few tokens, pens, a die and writable cards; “Villagesong” and “Decaying Orbit” have comparatively less “stuff”. The amount of cards is roughly the same, except for “Our Mundane Supernatural Life” which has considerably fewer. Strictly speaking about physical content, the best bang for your buck is definitely “Saltfish & Almanacs” - but I recommend getting the game that speaks most to you, when deciding which game to get.
All games are replayable for at least a few times and I’ve had many widely different sessions in the same game. Most of the games tend to be on the shorter end of the time estimation when not extensively roleplaying.
Each game offers a link to a video that explains the rules - I’m more of a reading person myself, but it’s neat that they’re here for those who prefer watching videos to learn a game.
There were some challenges too, though. Except for “Our Mundane Supernatural Life” all games had read-aloud texts that can become a challenge if your table isn’t speaking decent to good English. On-the-go translation (also for others) is possible as there are no secrets between each other, but it can interrupt the flow of the game.
All of these games also need more or less constant attention from all players. In other (more “traditional”) games there are often lulls or scenes that just aren’t necessary for your character, but this is not the case here. The narrative often goes back to things that have happened earlier and things that happen are usually important. So take your time, take some breaks and look out for each other when things get intense.
