Undo Card Game First Impressions (Spoiler Free)
The Undo card games have you bouncing around in time trying to prevent a death.
Can you do it?
In the game series Undo, players slip into the role of these destiny weavers and do everything in their power to undo sudden deaths — whether murder or suicide. Not only do they travel minutes or hours back in time, but sometimes thousands of years to change events that have laid the foundation for the later stroke of fate. Sometimes a leap into the future can also provide important information.
Undo Game Play
This is a spoiler-free review, nothing is revealed on any card you won’t see during setup. At the bottom of the page (after a spoiler-alert banner) is a quick look at each game with very minor plot overviews, but still NO SPOILERS.
You have several points of time laid out on the table each with a clue card under it and a few scorecards above it. You choose to go to a point in time, read the card, and choose to reveal the clue at that location if you want.
Each of these points in time gives you an option of what you want to do next. You choose one, then reveal the relevant scorecard for that point in time matching the decision you made.
These could be a positive number, a minus or a neutral zero depending on your choice. This is reflecting on how you influenced events from that point in time.
You can only view a couple of those clue cards per game and you won’t get to see all the points in time during the game either.
At the end of the game, you’ll get a final score which is the total of the scorecards you revealed. You’ll see how well you did and find out if you prevented the death, or not.
You’ll also have a chance to read the full story and learn where you went wrong or where you could have improved.
Theme
Fantastical but fun. Reminds me of T.I.M.E Stories.
More details on the Theme of each individual game later.
Setup & Rulebook
Setup involves taking the shrink wrap off the cards.
The rulebook is in the cards and gives you the setup and gameplay rules as you need them. It’s fine, but the rules being split up like that can make it difficult to find specific rules if you need them later. They’re not subtitled.
Components & Artwork
Just text really and themed micro art on the cards. Not much to see here.
Ease of Teaching & Accessibility
Very simple and very accessible. It’s a co-op so everyone has a say in what to do and where to go. Also, the ‘active’ player can listen to input before making any decision.
Undo Summary
It’s an interesting game. How the story plays out as you learn more and more is very well done. The score you get for influencing events makes sense in context after reading the solution.
Putting info together from several points in time and using that info to make correct decisions is very satisfying.
So, while there is no real replayability, the games are cheap and nothing is destroyed so they can be resold.
Cherry Blossom Festival Review (Played October 2019)
This is set in Japan and one point in time is 1945 which tells you something. It’s a really sad story and sadly our 4 points were not good enough to prevent the death.
Despite the sad story, we did enjoy playing the game. We managed to piece quite a few clues together to pick some good choices. Those incorrect choices we made did make sense once we read the full story.
Curse from the Past (Played October 2023)
Set in both 1990’s Germany and Ancient Egypt… I know it was 4 years since I played the last one but we had no idea what was happening here. We didn’t really piece anything together, no clues really led anywhere and it felt like we were just playing ‘hit and hope’ on the time jumps.
1 point says it all! I feel this story was much more abstract with too many twists for us to do anything to prevent the death.
Blood in the Gutter Review
Coming Soon!
Jesta ThaRogue
