What You Wish For

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The first major release by Damwain Games, and boy is it a good one!! Before my final product review i feel i must state that i was involved in this game during playtest.

The final product is a 16 page A5 rulebook and 20 postcard quality inspiration cards

What you wish for is a structured freeform game for 3 players (no more no less) and takes about 90 mintues to play through

They say never judge a book by it’s cover, and in this case never a truer word spoken, the cover is ****! a badly drawn man with some numerical squiggles incorporating a few numbers surrounding the title, there is nothing to draw your eye to this game if it was stood on a trade stand and seeing the quality of art on the included cards its a shame this was overlooked

The game itself explores the hopes and memories of everyday people and was designed (i think) to smack the face of the misery porn games that are available. The game begins with ‘The Preparation’ in which the players draw one of the inspiration cards and interprets what they see, the card is then passed to the next player who does the same, this is done until each player has drawn and passed a card. Next is the ”The Reflection’, each player comes up with a normal everyday person who is dissatisfied with their life, stuck in a rut or pissed off with the daily grind of life, once done play can begin with one player ‘exploring’ and the other two players taking the roles of ‘The Past’ and ‘The Future’. The player will draw a card and narrate ‘The happiest time of my life was when…..’ and will place the card in front of the player playing ‘The Past’, this player will then narrate that memory using the card’s art for inspiration and will ask the player questions about this memory which should be answered to construct the story. However ‘The Future’ has 3 tokens with which to interject this memory with a few sentences about another memory that was painful for the character (this will not make the memory an unhappy one however) and once all interjections have been made ‘The Past’ will wrap up the memory on a happy note. The player will then draw another card take inspiration then continue by saying ‘ I have always wished that i might……’ (this is the playing characters Hope) and narrate a brief sentence about something their character has always dreamt of doing. ‘The Future’ will now narrate a scene representing the characters hopes for the future, and this time ‘The Past’ can interject this hopes with doubt!! Finally once done the player will have 2 cards in front of them one representing the past and one the future, The player must now decide how they will move on with their life, will they rediscover who they once were and set off after new hopes, or close the door on their past and follow their dreams, they will discard the card representing the path they do not wish to take and will narrate a scene on how their choice affects their life going forward….. Rinse and repeat for each player

The cards that come boxed are of a very good quality and are somewhat cartoonish in style but can provoke some very different interpretations. All in all this is a good game and a good product that comes with the Mick stamp of approval, A powerful tool and story gaming at it’s best!!! Get it while its hot!!

Review by Mick Red

You can buy this product from DriveThruRPG/RPGNow.