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Pierluca Zizzi offers his take on the fairy-tale-to-game transformation with Dark Tales from Italian publisher dV Giochi. Dark Tales is mostly a card game, but the heart of the game is a set of items commonly found in fairy tales: swords, armor, magic wands, and gold coins. These items are represented by tokens, and at the start of the game you draw one of three setting cards to determine how these items can be used during the game and what their effects will be; a separate setting card drawn from a different group of three determines which items will be worth victory points — and how many of them — at the end of the game.
You start with a hand of three cards, and on a turn you draw a card, optionally use an item for its effect, then play one card. Cards — which range from Dark Lords, Dragons and Wizards to Gypsies, Witches and Princesses — might be placed in front of you to provide an ongoing power, placed in a common area to all players, or discarded as their effect is carried out, possibly affecting males or females, villains or places depending on the card in question. When someone has no cards in hand at the start of his turn, the game ends and players tally their points.
This expansion adds new items specific to Snow's story — a comb, a poisoned apple, burning shoes and laced bodices — along with 24 cards and two new setting cards. The cards can be shuffled with the base deck, which will extend the game time, or you can remove ten cards from the deck prior to playing in order to keep the playing time roughly the same while boosting the Whiteness of the game, so to speak.
Given the wealth of fairy tales in existence, I'm sure that Zizzi and dV Giochi have several more expansion packs ready for the retelling (and retailing) should this game prove as resonant as the stories themselves.
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