Skip to main content

Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
TagsGame Engines

Great generator for an interesting and unexpected backstory! If you're on the fence about using this, I'd definitely recommend giving it a go - it's one page, and you can tailor it to what you need it to do with the amount and type of cards you select. (Full review below!)

*For reference, I tested this solo game by myself, without having made a character in any system to begin with. So, when the game asked me to use a multiple of 10 cards, I used 11, with the first one acting as my end state.


This is a really interesting game, with a lot of good ideas I'd love to see expanded. I was pleasantly surprised to see it was only one page, which meant it would be a quick read and I could jump straight into playing, which I did after 5-10 minutes worth of reading.

Separating suits of a deck into different themes (like Clubs being Misfortune) is a great idea, and the added element of dice rolling to get a bit more detail (like a result of 1 being "Foe" for example) was a nice addition to help nudge me in a given direction.

Despite having no concept to begin with, I came up with the tragic story of a vigilante, Tony, AKA "The Legendary Knuckleduster" as he survived an explosion because of his friend, Mark the police officer for the Venture City PD, who jumped in front of the blast. The whole story had ups and downs, and I only had to move a result once to make better sense of what was going on - obviously a lot of thought went into this. I really enjoyed the story created, and I'm not sure I would've come up with it had it not been for this game!

That being said, the non-printable PDF is very hard to read, and the printable version looks a bit less interesting than the overall aesthetic presents itself to be.

The game also tells you that you can play "with a friend", but I personally don't see the benefit of doing this, as you are coming up with a sole character's backstory, using tools like cards and dice already. More minds are better, of course, but it feels odd that you'd want two, even when the game itself says that any more is untested waters. Odd!

While the game itself is definitely really well designed, the language used to explain it leaves a bit to be desired. Unfortunately, the "building the story deck" section suffers the most, where it isn't clear what you should do and when as you are building a deck from different suits. A numbered list would've been great here, but for anyone reading: separate all cards into suits, shuffle each pile, then choose how many cards your final deck will have. Then, you just take cards from each pile and form a final deck, which you then shuffle. When you play, you're going to draw cards, and if you want a specific ending, you add/make sure one card is at the top. At least, that's what I did.

I was a bit confused with the Foreshadowing mechanic as well, so much so that I chose not to implement it. "Flipping" cards to save them for later is also a great idea, especially when you're not make sure what to make of them yet. I'd say that you only need Flipping, as it renders Foreshadowing a bit redundant.

Finally, "Foe", "Family", and "Friend" all are quite universally applicable as details, but "Item", "Conviction", and "Memory" aren't. I wonder if the designer was struggling with the last 3, because they seem to apply less to the other results than the first 3. That being said, when Item and Memory came up, I did use them to my advantage, though I feel like it might skew stories in a certain way - depending on how often they come up! Conviction was an odd one, when my dice landed on it I just rolled it again as I wasn't make sure what to make of it.

All in all, a great backstory generator, with a great idea and a great implementation. With a bit of added TLC, this could be one of the greats for sure! Hope to see a version 3 sometime soon!