In Origin Story, you’re not an established superhero. Instead, you’re building your hero piece by piece and taking your first super-steps.
Origin Story is a superhero game. But unlike other superhero games, we’re not focusing as strongly on the powers and battles. Instead, Origin Story asks you to build and reveal your hero from their first days. Build your backstory, pick your allies, collect your gadgets and tools, and develop that antagonistic relationship with your archenemy.
| Quick Guide | ||
|---|---|---|
| Mechanics | Trick-Taking, Strategy | |
| Players | 1-5 Players, Age 14+ | |
| Playing Time | 45 Minutes | |
| Similar Games | Wyrmspan, Tricktakers, Rebel Princess | |
| Publisher | Stonemaier Games |
Origin Story Overview
Origin Story is a trick-taking tableau-building game where players slowly assemble their superhero or supervillain’s origin story. Over the course of five rounds, your character’s backstory, powers, and skills will develop. And as players take tricks and piece together their character’s origin story, they are strategically working to gain points and sabotage their opponents.
While the superhero genre has been huge and full of an endless collection of unique and interesting heroes, Origin Story uses completely original characters and gorgeous art by Clémentine Campardou. So when you start on your journey with your super-character, it really feels like you’re piecing together your origin story.
At the end of five rounds, players will reveal their newly minted superhero or villain, collect any bonuses they earned, and tally up their points to see who’s won. Because while everyone may be about to start their life of crime-fighting (or, crime-committing), someone has to be best at it by-the-numbers.
How To Play Origin Story
Origin Story is primarily a trick-taking card game. If you’re not sure what this means, think of games like Hearts, Bridge, or Spades. This means that the rules are fairly simple, and you’ve probably learned and played similar games before.
To set up, players will be dealt a few different kinds of cards. Story Cards will be played on your placemat to fill out pieces of your story. Event Cards will throw a wrench or two into your character’s story’s trajectory. And Superhero Cards are held on to and revealed at the end to show which hero you eventually become.
But most importantly is your hand of trick-taking cards. These look a lot like a regular deck of cards, only there are no face cards – only numbers – and instead of the suits you’re familiar with there is Brains, Speed, Strength, and Love. In this game, Love is the trump suit.
Throughout rounds, players will add Story Cards to their character placemat and try to win or lose tricks depending on what is most strategic to their story and cards. And yes, sometimes you’ll be purposefully trying to lose a hand in order to win the entire game.
Should I Buy This Game?
I think that Origin Story is a really great mix between simplicity and strategy. Experienced board gamers won’t get bored of building their supercharacter, but newer players and kids wouldn’t find the game especially challenging to learn.
This is also a game that takes the somewhat overused superhero genre, and manages to make it feel fresh and new. Most superpowers and heroes games focus on archenemy fights and harnessing your powers. But in Origin Story, you’re discovering who your character is.
This is a game that feels like it could be enjoyed by absolutely everyone, and would be a perfect addition to almost any game night.
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