The First Game to Make Quinns Cry - Alice is Missing Review 

I've played this game... maybe 7 times now? I know that it makes me a psychopath, but I truly cannot express how much the game means to me. Almost every time I've played it, someone's left the table in tears which is usually not a great sell for a game but it really is for this one. A campaign of any other RPG takes an extraordinary amount of time to get this level of emotional investment, this game nails it in around 3 hours. I'm glad you got to have a similar experience!

Played this game with my friends some time back, and my god it was an experience. Tears welled up in those final moments. One of the best things I’ve ever played. If anyone hasn’t played it, please do.

Please keep doing rpg reviews. The passion you have for them is so infectious and I love to see reviews when someone has actually played a system. You’re a gem, Quinns

The whole voicemail thing really sounds like 10 candles… another 1 session role playing game that genuinely really effected me.

My brain immediately started filling the blanks from just seeing the box, the manual, and the basic description of it. Haven't played it myself, but damn, I can't begin to imagine how much of an emotional hit this is. Just this review was one and hit so close to home in certain places Also, the idea of having twins for a 6th player is _genius._ I can't overstate that, that's an amazing way of having players two-hand a character for a roleplaying game

It's my favourite RPG. Not only for its emotional gut punch, but because its so tightly wound as a TTRPG experience. The designer has a great tutorial about how to run the pre-game prep, how to avoid it dragging out too long and keep the momentum going so you can pour your creative energy into the right places. You sit down with your friends, and two and a half hours later you've had the complete experience. It's a brilliant, conscientious piece of design.

My group had a very different experience. First, while I prepped them as this could be a really dark game, it never really got *too* dark because either we were struggling with the technology (80% of the group were late 30s and up so we weren't big "group chatters"), or we didn't let ourselves go that far. Eerily enough though, all of our story beats lined up beautifully, so there were none of the dangling plot threads that you describe. I died, and it was actually quite emotional for me. We played over Discord and it was a lot of fun. I would actually love to play with a different group sometime. I get what you say when you say it wouldn't be "your" Alice or "your" Charlie, but it's like watching a remake of a movie or TV show: you can still enjoy the new version, and still keep a fond little corner in your heart for the "original". I can't wait to get the Expansion and try this with another group.

For another similar experience you may want to look into Love & Barbed Wire, which is a game about a soldier and lover writing letters back and forth during a war. It's only for 2 players, and while I it doesn't have as much of a presentation as this and it relies more heavily on the player's ability to "dig in" to the characters and write in the theme of the letters, the way the game randomizes the results is more straight forward (uses a deck of poker cards) and neatly avoids the replayability issue that you bring up. I've played six "sessions" of it and each one was wildly different and while some outcomes are filled with joy, there are other outcomes that are filled with genuine sadness and we cried as well.

Played this with my friends a while back. One was tired, another skeptical. All were enraptured after a short while. It definitely is an experience i wholeheartedly recommend for everyone mildly interested in something magical and different.

this game is peak. my friends and i played it and then spent 3-4 hours afterwards decompressing and talking about the experience with all our little favorite character moments, such a beautiful game

I got to explore so many things in this game that I had never been able to before. Mostly improv. Those voice mails at the end that are revealed are so incredible to finish with. My voicemail made people in the group cry after everything we did and I had no idea what I was doing. I just tried to be my character and after the entire story played out, it was just the perfect ending. I felt anxious for other people to hear it because I had opened up my character so much and I felt that. This game is excellent. but make sure you play it with people you trust and respect. This game can go dark and you want to make sure the people you play with are respectful of boundaries and the fact that this experience, even if dark, is meant to be enjoyed.

Some friends and I played this last year over Discord, and it was the first really good roleplaying session since pre-pandemic. But I agree, I don't know what I'd want to go back and play this again. It's excellent. But it's heavy and changes to characters in subsequent plays would feel like a needless Hollywood remake. Also, my phone keeps changing one of my friend's contact info back to their character periodically, which is both hilarious and kinda tragic.

Such an incredible game. The text only basis quickly immerses you so I've found that, even with friends who tend to get very silly when we're playing face-to-face roleplaying, playing entirely via text (or via Discord messages) really put you into the right headspace, and the tension really ramps up with specific prompts and the timer counting down. Really looking forward to seeing what the expansion brings to the game.

Great review, glad to see this can work for groups. We played this and kinda fell flat. You really need everyone to take it seriously and understand what the game is trying to do. Personally I would have liked the game to provide more of the story. Having to make everything up was tricky for us, as people were looking for answers the game didn't provide. The game doesnt want you to fill in the blanks but also bring the paper and outline.

I just noticed you have an Outer Wilds tattoo on your arm at 10:54. Thats easily my favorite video game of all time

if you like the voice mail mechanic you gotta try out 10 candles. It's also bleak but fun, highly evocative, plays fast (though longer than alice), light on rules and is just soooo good. I'd even say the voice recordijg works even better in 10c Alice is a better starting point however due to the even shorter playtime and the removal of acting. I love both :)

Spectacular game. We were 4 players, all with various levels of RP experience and everyone had such an emotional journey

This is one of my favorite games of all time. Even just hearing the soundtrack in this video makes me tear up. Getting to playtest some of the original materials and basically facilitating it as Charlie many times, I am so appreciative of its design and the way the story emerges so organically from the game's mechanisms. And yes, it made me cry, too.

Hunted down a copy of this with my friend at SHUX and we had a great session. So much easier to role play over text. Hope to see other games do roleplaying in a similar way.

Great review, loved the nuanced recommendations! I played Alice is Missing in person with four other friends around a table in person. As someone who’s “into” improv and the indie RPG scene, I was blown away by the density of roleplaying in the game. There’s the highest density of in-character “utterances” in any game I’ve played. It’s also good for players new to RPGs because it gives players characters and story skeletons so you don’t have to be “creative”, you can just jump into the fun roleplay. On the other hand, my group also felt that the structure of the game was too restricting. Some of the ways the game sets up the plot (like flipping over cards at random for plot elements) were irritating because they often went against our improv groupthink. We all kind of implicitly agreed what the plot was and what plot threads were interesting to follow, but when the game tells you that one of the least interesting threads is actually the most important, it felt jarring and immersion-breaking when we had to do narrative acrobatics to fit it in. We also kind of disliked the fact that there’s not a lot of ways for players to capitalize on good ideas they have or move the narrative away from what the game tells you - players have to wait for the timer to tick down and then figure out how to incorporate the new plot element into our story so far, rather than players driving the action themselves. Totally agree with it being a very passive story, IMO annoyingly so. I think Alice is Missing is a fun experience to play once, but it would probably be just as fun or more fun to create your own characters, come up with character secrets and relationships, and then freeform roleplay using group chats and DMs for 90 minutes while playing the soundtrack (or your own fixed length playlist) and try to tell a reasonable story with rising action, climax, and resolution in that time.

I know this comment isn't related to this game, but just wanted to say I purchased Monickers "Classic" with the SU&SD pack in it and it's now one of our gaming group's favorite party games. Thanks for helping make such a great game!

We've been gushing over this game for a year now! It's an amazing one-of-a-kind experience and I can't agree more with you about the emotions, it just makes you feel things like no other game does. On a side note, we've played it multiple times. Surely the first time was the best, but it didn't lose much when being replayed. It's like watching a really good movie the second time. After a while, you just are eager to try it again

Nice touch with the traffic light: helped evoking that Twin Peaks feeling that the game has. And big thumbs up for Masks, it's a very fun game

Got the game off the back of this video- absolutely adored the experience! Our story ended on a semi-positive note but the rollercoaster to get there was incredible!! Thanks for the review and keep up the excellent work!! ❤

I haven’t seen one of your videos in ages! I’m so happy this came through my feed!

This was a fantastic video! I’m not sure I can handle this game, but I loved watching you talk about it.

"David's a b*tch" 🤣🤣 I love this game for moments like this.

Immediately downloaded. Thank you Quinns for all the amazing RPG content. Because of you I now play regular dnd and blades in the dark and I bloody love it!

Yes!! I longed for more RPG coverage and i got more RPG coverage! I hope that your RPG content gets at least the same amount of views as the board game ones. After playing and loving board games for years i got into roleplaying last year and i am totally hooked. Please keep the RPG content up! :-)

The voice recording thing is also present in 10 Candles and one of my absolute favorite parts of that game.

Always love seeing your mug when you're genuinely excited to tell us about something dude.

Have had this on my shelf for a while now, this is very motivating to get it to the table sooner

I have a lot of trouble with teen drama, I really hate that mostly because i cannot link with the story and because I have a lot of issue with how teenagers are represented so far from what I remember from my actual teen years. I was so afraid of Alice is missing when I played it the first time because of that. And playing it was an experience, like a really touching experience. Because of how the game work and how it give every people the possibility to manage their own limit, I had for the first time a story that feelt real about teenage struggle. I think this game is one of the best ever created. I don't think I'll recommand it, because it's so special. But if you have the curiosity to try and, and people you trust to play with, this is one of the most impactfull experience of this decade. No hesitation.

I bought this game on a whim, called my friends of varying RP experience (including one who had no RPG experience) to come over that same night. Sat down, set the game up and played the timer on the living room tv. None of us knew about the incredibly powerful and unforgettable experience we were about to have, and I'm glad I jumped into it completely blind. However, I am keen to run it again for another group just to get a completely different experience.

From thumbnail thought it was somehow a card game of the old Flash game Alice is Missing. Which I now remember is actually Alice is Dead. Alice is Dead are some classic Flash games, huge recommend.

We also had one too many people on our playthrough so my friend and I shared a character who was prone to tics and immediate mood swings. One moment our character responded to other characters arguing by simultaneously grabbing popcorn but also telling everyone to calm down and get along.

I work in live roleplaying games, and this was a fascinating review of an intriguing game. Probably not for me - I have the emotional range of one of those bricks they use for life-saving training at the swimming pool - but I know several folks who I think will find it equally interesting and are capable of human emotions. So cheers for that.

Glad to see another one of my favourites got a review :) I played it a few weeks ago and found my self in tears and in a sad dark place during the game and a sad reflective mood after. I played a julia who only had 1 person she was close to, Alice and the events her going missing destroyed her. This was about my 7th game of it after a long break and it was fantastic. I admit I do feel the complaint that you have your dakota and evan but after a couple of games I was able to find a place where I really enjoyed the many differences. There will definitely be characters you remember better and runs that pull at your heart better than other games but playing a new character changes a lot. I would also say without the expansion... the game doesn't truly follow through on the random playthrough aspect. 3 different possibilities for each time slot means you get a lot of familiar moments mixed with some new things. I'm hoping the expansion fixes this because currently between 2 games in a row you are all but guaranteed atleast 1 event showing up in both. I wonder if the plot complaints would be lessened if you reduced the number of suspects to maybe 3 suspects?

I ran this at SHUX 2022 and am so happy that you liked it and are showing it to others.

This video is a hit simply because Quinns dresses up as all the teenagers.

I played it when it first came out and had an amazingly emotional time. I would not have liked to play it again for quite a long time after, but now I think it's faded enough for a second go with new people. It just takes a little time.

My friends and I just played this game. All I can say is that couple of us cried. Some of us were lost for words. It was really a unique and special game.

This is a very good review. I am definitely going to try it... I don't know that I have the heart to try it more than once...

I've played this game twice, in the same week. The first was with 4, and the second with the full five. Both, save for me, were completely new people to the game. The first sesh went really well, it was immersive, it was sad, it was wow. The second...seemed too full. Like there was too much happening to be able to follow a through line. I still love this game, and I can't wait to try it again.

This one is REALLY good. Bought it and was waiting for a chance to play it, then a friend suggest playing it on his birthday, and while some where more into it than others, it was such a tense and different experience... Also worth noting was how the one in charge screwed and read the final card wrong. We all agreed it might have been for the best, as we got a more satisfying ending than the one the card threw us!

Played this twice and on one occasion some were close to tears, both excellent experiences

I love all this RPG content! I have a bad habit of buying exciting new RPGs and then not being able to find room to play them amongst my existing RPG campaigns. Being just a single evening experience this sounds much more likely for me to get it to the table. I am concerned about the mystery being incoherent because I think that's something that would really bother me and at least some of my friends. But given that the PDF is pretty cheap and it only takes an evening it sounds like it's worth trying regardless. And perhaps going in knowing not to expect it all to piece together might make it easier to just go along for the ride rather than trying to solve it.

I played this game very recently and I don't think is an adequate game for new RPG players because it ask quite a lot of the players, creatively and involvement where the silence kind of isolates them with their insecurities about "is this how a rpg should be played?" "what I have to do now? did I miss something or I have to invent the answer?" Like we all know when we try to teach someone to play rpg, that one of the big blockers is not the actual specific rules but the more general concept of the activity - also I think the game should be a bit clearer about the fact that is not a detective story, and while the objective of the characters is to find Alice and figure out what happened, the objective of the players is not that at all. I think that can create a massive disappointment in a lot of players that may be approaching this game like a detective/investigation game

Had a wild experience of this game, my partner and I introduced this to two friends who had never roll played. We were afraid they wouldn’t be able to lose themselves in the characters, boy were we wrong. They created the most over the top, absurd characters and then commuted completely and totally to playing them to the max. It basically turned the game into two people trying to find a missing girl, and two people so absorbed into their toxic, horrible characters that all they could do was shit post in a group chat. It definitely was not the intended style of the game, but we had a great time. We laughed so hard for 90 minutes straight

You should also go and play 10 Candles if you love the mechanic of recording a message and revealing at the end. I think it probably is more replayable too. Friendly advice from a lover of the channel. Keep up the awesome work.

Thanks for covering more awesome RPGs, Quinns! Would love to hear about your post-Spire campaign. Was it Heart? I bet it was Heart.

You made me buy it 😂 I love these types of experiences!

Nobody does RPG reviews quite like y’all. I’d really love to see more.

Just played my first game and had an interesting session. Game was amazingly tense and had a hilarious Tarantino style ending between the town police and our perpetrator. Highly recommend

Quinns trying to make his new year predictions come true.

I love the idea of games like this, but the D&D roleplay group I'm with can't stop trying to be comedians even when I'm running some dark moments from Curse of Strahd. It's fun gaming with them don't get me wrong, but we couldn't do this haha

Quinns and SUSD: I greatly appreciate that you're reviewing games like these, and that you're leaving space for the art in games to shine. I couldn't watch this review. I've watched every single full-length SUSD review up until now but, living in Mexico, a country where young people are systematically kidnapped, and where women are always under threat of femicide, I couldn't stomach more than the first 2 minutes of the review. I still think it is a very beautiful game as a piece of art and I still think it is really cool that you would review it on SUSD. Keep on keeping on!

14:45 Dear Esther suffers from that problem. It's a beautiful walking simulator and the script is artful and poignant, but it has random variations which means that things don't always come together in a way that feels like it was going somewhere in particular. It sometimes meanders in a way reminiscent of an ai chat bot that seems to be conversing nicely and then veers off into foreign territory and shows the cracks in the technology.

Hey Quinns. Never played an RPG before but I’d love for you to keep doing reviews of them (in addition to the board games) because my own game group needs to expand out into new territory.

We played this, and it was unbelievable. Everything you said it would be.

This is my favorite game full stop. I have played it 3 times and each expereince was dreadfully beautiful!

I’d really love to hear from you about this game again in a year if you try to play it again. This feels like the sort of thing you play once a year at most.

I love the voicemails! reminds me of Ten Candles.

This was great! I'd love to see more TTRPG reviews.

Great video, this game kinda scares me with the feels that could happen but it does look great. I love the showcasing of all these different types of RPG. 5E was my entry point but the rabbit hole of TTRPG's is so vast and awe inspsiring, it's so worth it to explore. Also can we get your review of your campaign of Heart please and thank you!

I’ve been wanting this game for a while! I’ll take this video as a sign.

I regret not backing this all in during the first campaign, and now that the second campaing is out there i'm fixing that mistake

Shout-out to all the people listening to this video like a podcast who now think Quinns has never once shed tears before this game.

I just got done with SUSDs boardgame predictions for 2023. Think Qunnis doing a RPG review is one prediction proven correct.

Man, I’m really hoping to see a Masks review (and bluebeards bride). Masks is such an interesting concept and execution such that I can’t tell if they nailed it or missed half the content needed to make it work.

I get really strong ''Life is strange'' vibe from this game. And I love that. I can't wait to play it. Great review. Appreciate, no spoilers ❤

Heart the city beneath review would BE SOOOOO GOOOOOD I really would love to see it ♥ keep up the awesome work

I liked Alice is Missing, but I didn't love it as much as many people I see talk about it. It was good, I don't regret kickstarting it, and I'm glad I played it, I'll probably play it again sometime; but it wasn't the transformative, emotional experience Quinns describes here. The art is beautiful, and the soundtrack incredible, but the game design just felt a little thin. There were points in the game where we all felt like we were sitting around waiting for the next thing to happen. Something happened to one of the player characters, and we were all stuck waiting for the next card - the game rules didn't allow us to go to that PC's location and do anything about it. For everything I liked about this system, it felt like the player characters lacked much agency to actually do anything or influence the story's direction. I've played other narrative rules lite RPGs where this wasn't an issue. I'd still recommend people play Alice is Missing for all the good reasons I mentioned, but I like having meaningful choices in my RPG, which I felt like this game didn't provide me. All roleplay, no game.

Super cool premise, and the review makes me wanna give it ago so bad!

I'd love to hear about Bluebeard's Bride if you feel like covering that after you've played it!

Thank you so much for the review! Wow.

7:30 Dude this is my actual text message ringtone. Bought the game from your link immediately upon hearing it.

I remember listening to a good number of the podcast episodes. I didn't know that they created a game. Wonder if there is or is going to be a Welcome to Nightvale game. I had recently offered to run for my RPG group a series of one-shots of various games so we could try out different systems. This one sounds like an interesting one to try out sometime.

"It's hard being a RU-vidr. I do the best I can." If I wasn't already a LONG time fan of your channel, I would watch on the back of that pitch alone.

I want to see your review of Bluebeard's Bride so much! It has been in my bookshelf for a while, I didn't find an occasion to try it yet. It's the only rpg book that sends me shivers just reading it, it seems such a disturbingly good horror game. About Alice is Missing, that game also made me cry. I've run it two times after playing, and it never came close to the same level of immersion, but what an amazing experience it was the first time. It' still one of the greatest RPG experience of my life.

Just picked this game up. Watched this video a while back and am looking forward to trying it out.

life is generally down down down right now and I have an unfortunate lack of boardgame applicable friends, BUT it is amazing having the chance to show up and watch these videos! Just the unquestionable quality in your videos and beautifully curated selection of games, Thank you!

Could you set up the 3 envelope idea prior to play? I wonder if I set up now and then play the game 6 months from now - maybe I would forget the setup or maybe still have some of the time cards still be random and have key parts/time in an envelope to create a better story? If anyone who played this and wants to put the setup in BGG? Maybe only mention the time and first few words of the card so the person setting up doesn't need to read everything for setting up in the envelope.

The voice mail mechanism already works wonders when playing Ten Candles.

Man some of the soundtrack really reminds me of the old The World is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die/Deer Leap split LP, and that’l already make me extremely emotionally vulnerable

Then Quinns didn't play enough This War of Mine.

Added to my bucket list for the next lockdown

I've run it 9 times. I've had people ugly cry at the end. I had one person so overwhelmed by the ending that she needed 5 minutes to respond. It deserves the accolades it won. Its FANTASTIC.

Very interesting premise for an RPG. Ordered.

I totally get this "one go and be finished with it". I had a similar reaction to the movie "Requiem for a dream". Had very strong emotions, I recommend it highly but I never want to see it again.

Excellent review Quinns, one of your best.

Very good video. On minor error I have seen is that the 1 tile is minus one point. You could argue it is worth the maximum Minuspoints of your floor line, because if you would not have taken it this would be the points you have more.

I would love to see a SUSD review of Bluebeard's Bride. I saw the Kickstarter, was hyped to pick it up as a fan of horror films, watched the actual play by the dev and some friends, and that made me realize although I found the theme fascinating, I didn't have the stomach to actually conjure that sort of horror from my own imagination. Still, looks very good at what it's meant to do and I'd especially be interested how your experience with it compares to Alice is Missing.

I love this game. Such a deep RP experience. Edit: I also really like the premise of Masks xD me showing my TTRPG side lol. GL guys and have fun! Fantastic review. Spoiler free. And also, if you know, then you know. Can totally relate to everything Quinns described.

I played this game yesterday and I was playing charlie barnes and played with 3 other friends, the experience was great. One played the brother, another the best friend and the last played the secret girlfriend. By the end of the game the culprit broke down my door and shot me. Then the brother found Alice lying dead and was chased by the culprit and ultimately died next to his sister. While the best friend killed himself because he blamed himself, so the only one left alive was the secret girlfriend. And I was in tears by the end.

omg, you just made the store that I work at, overrun with cutomers who wants Alice is Missing.

Definitely just ordered this on Amazon

They don’t seem to be selling the physical version of this anymore, which makes me sad. The listing on Amazon indicates they don’t have any more and likely won’t, and the website has it listed as a pre-order despite it being out for more than 2 years

It's a very very good game indeed. And I also agree with your take on the game and experiences/criticisms 100%

Thank you for the content warning at the start. It's very appreciated.