Tales of Evil

Tales of Evil

We had heard of Tales of Evil before from Escape Studios, we heard the game likes to bring real life in play. We were so happy when this box arrived at our home, we immediately started unboxing. We just love the surprise that each sealed box contains, just waiting for us to open it. When we were done, it was already pretty late so we decided to start playing the next day. Clueless as we were, we left the box in the middle of the kitchen table. So imagine my surprise when I just wanted to get a drink in the middle of the night and I saw the box GLOWING IN THE DARK. Needless to say, I woke up the whole house because of that scare…

How to Play.

The set up in this game will be very different since you will play a different scenario each time when you progress with the story. But there are always a few things the same. Choose one (or two) investigators per player, and take the corresponding player board, standee, three battery tokens, action cards, status cards and the tokens that fit with the status level. Daphne also gets the ritual cards. Place the equipment and special cards aside and shuffle the search, event and trauma cards. Next, you simply take the chapter you wish to play and follow the instructions. We do recommend that you start your story with the introduction story. You can find this in the beginning of the story book.

The introduction story is designed in a way that you learn how to play the game trough it, like a tutorial. We highly recommend to just start playing! The tutorial is really well made and makes sure you will find yourself in most situations that need explaining. If you keep the rulebook next to you as a reference guide, you are good to go.

In order to not take the fun away, I will just write a quick overview of actions you can take with your character. In Tales of Evil, you can perform basic actions like move, attack, using an item, rolling dice, etc. But you will also have to make decisions, perform rituals and perform tests. Watch your body, mind and fear tokens closely as with a lot of scenarios you might lose them, causing your character to become stressed or even become stunned. If you become stunned, you won’t be able to attack, defend or help out your friend anymore and will have to wait out the rest of the scenario. Also keep an eye out for the event board. Make sure the terror and panic token does not reach your group token, or you will fail your current chapter.

The last thing you need to know, is the fusion system. You, from your warm and comfortable place you are sitting at right now, will have to help your investigators on their challenge by helping in real life since from the moment you started playing Tales of Evil, you became a part of the story. This means that every time when you encounter a fusion challenge, you start the hourglass and the game will ask you to complete a challenge in real life. I don’t want to spoil the surprise for you, but trust me when I say get ready and keep your eyes open with this brilliant feature.

Playthrough of the game.

From the moment we started the game and we were asked to join the Pizza & Investigation club, we were hooked. This game has really good quality components and the details are spot on. Even the dices are glow in the dark and the art is spot on. If the Goonies or Stranger things could be converted to a board games, this would be it.

Tales of Evil is a highly cooperative game but you will find that every character will do well with standing strong for his/her own well being. It also has a lot of surprises that you don’t expect and that we also didn’t see before in the narrative story games we have played before. The story is also really well written. That being said, sometimes when changing scenery or from switching between actions/ cards because you resolved them for example, we felt like there was some explanation missing as to what happened with the previous card, or the scenario on that previous card, it’s like the consequences just vanished into thin air. I don’t want to spoil anything so I won’t give a precise example. Other than that, Tales of Evil is a well designed exploration game that we think is a lot of fun.
But remember, Tales of Evil came to your doorstep for a reason and it’s up to you to eliminate all evil in the world. Don’t be surprised if evil finds you in real life and you have to act in real life…

Final thoughts.

Tales of Evil is a highly cooperative story telling exploration game that even brings activities of the real life into play. You will go on a adventure with the Pizza & Investigation club and it’s up to you to defeat all evil. The game is well designed, has good quality components and has a lot of unexpected scenarios. If you like story telling exploration games, we think this is a great addition to your collection.