Sometimes the best games are those that involve the use of one’s own imagination. If you don’t believe me, give Dungeons & Dragons a spin with an experienced Game Master. Even if RPGs like that aren’t your thing, rest assured that there is a huge market for that kind of thing. The goal of “Inspiration”, a card game that’ll be seeking funding on Kickstarter around May 12, 2017, tasks players with using their imagination to tell the best story based on the available art cards. Special thanks to Project Lead Owen Camber for providing me with a prototype for preview purposes. It’s important to stress that prototypes are not often reflective of the final product, making everything you see here (including the rules) subject to change.
“Inspiration” supports 3-6 players, though you could play with two or even fly solo if you don’t mind modifying the rules. The components included in my prototype copy were: 60 art cards, 32 subject cards, and 15 point tokens. The art cards and the subject cards are shuffled separately and each player draws five art cards and three subject cards. The last player to have written something down becomes the judge, with the player to the left starting the round.
Like “Apples to Apples”, players will take turns being a judge. At the start of a player’s turn (who isn’t the judge), they’ll choose two art cards from their hand and place them face-up for all to see. Once that’s done, the player to the active player’s left chooses one subject card and one art card to add to the active player’s two art cards. From there, the active player has thirty seconds to tell a story that relates to the subject and three art cards. Once complete, the cards are given to the judge to remind them as to which player told which story. Every player besides the judge will do this. The judge will also not give the active player cards.
As far as the judging process is concerned, the rules used are up to you. For example, one player might choose the best story as the one that was the funniest, while another might be a stickler and demand to know how one of the cards was used in the story. I’m personally of the opinion that if the story is both great and entertaining, not including a card “enough” wouldn’t warrant disqualification. Of course, you’re free to play as you like. The person deemed to have the best story by the judge gets a point token. The first player to three points wins the game.
As I mentioned above, it is possible to play solo or with two players with some modified rules. While not mentioned in the rulebook, you COULD play with two players if both acted as a judge and told a story every round. They’d have to be honest though and agree as to why which story is better. Flying solo also doesn’t have an official rule set, but I don’t see why you couldn’t flex your creative storytelling muscles to entertain your friends on social media. Folks who have no issues modifying or creating rules to suit their play group should have no problems doing this.
As a side note, I could also see this game being used in a school or medical setting. Some tests for autism rely on asking those being tested to tell a story based on various objects or toys in front of them, something in which I personally witnessed. Of course, some of the subjects like “revenge” or anything that might be construed as negative might want to be filtered out of the deck if used for those purposes. I guess the point I’m leading to is that “Inspiration” has more to offer here than what might be originally seen.
Pledging for the game starts around $22, which will grant you one copy of the base game. You can see all of the tiers on the game’s Kickstarter page.