Go Backwards Through Time and Explore a Spooky Mansion in Flashback: Lucy

Lucy has a special power. When she touches an object belonging to someone who’s disappeared, she has a vision of their final moment. After inheriting a spooky manor from her aunt, she uses her power to discover its secrets as well as the secrets of her family.

Flashback: Lucy is a deduction game, published by Scorpion Masqué, with a 40-minute game time (at least according to the box) and designed for 1-4 players.

Gameplay

The game is divided into four chapters, which are intended to be played in order. Each chapter comes with a deck of oversized cards with numbers on their back. There is also another deck of small cards with runes on their back.

When you play each chapter, you go through four steps. The first step is to read that chapter’s introductory comic strip, which will end by asking you to draw one of the small cards, identified by its rune, which gives a bit of a story and will then direct you to draw the first oversized card of the chapter and place it on the table.

A chapter card will show a scene from a moment in time inside the manor. When players see a number in the image shown on a chapter card, they can also reveal the chapter card that has that number. Different cards of the same chapter will show the same moment in time but from different perspectives or locations. Some chapter cards also show rune symbols. When you see a rune symbol, players take that rune card from the little deck. If the rune card has a cat’s paw image on it, it is set aside to be revealed at the end of the chapter; otherwise, it is revealed immediately. Finally, chapter cards can show a number preceded by a question mark. This prompts you to draw and reveal one of that chapter’s question cards.

The goal of the chapter is to reveal all the cards associated with the chapter, and then answer all the questions revealed. The questions will be about events happening in the scene, which players must deduce from the images they can see.

Once players have revealed all the chapter cards and believe they know the answers to all the questions, they check their answers on the back of the rulebook.

Finally, players move on to the last step of the chapter, which is revealing all the cat paw rune cards they collected, which gives the final story moments of the chapter.

Review

Flashback: Lucy is the second game in the Flashback series, with the first one being set in the Zombie Kidz universe. The mechanic of seeing a scene from multiple different angles is so clever, and it’s nice to have a game using this mechanic that tells its own story. A spooky house feels a bit more universally appealing than Zombie Kidz.

Each chapter does have a unique mechanic associated with it, and it was fun to discover each one. Each chapter of the game is also set further back in history, starting in 2015 and working back to 1692. It was enjoyable to work slowly backwards in time, seeing the house through the different eras, and following the storyline in reverse.

The story here is spooky and a little dark, and different parents will have different standards they judge by, but the 8+ rating on the box feels fair, and children of this age could play the game.

It’s been a while since we’ve played the first Flashback game, but our memory of it was that it was more challenging than this one, with the chapters escalating in difficulty. The difficulty didn’t escalate here at all, and while the rulebook says that a game of Lucy consists of playing through a single chapter, we easily played through the whole thing in about 90 minutes. This was a fast game and not challenging, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing since it makes it a good fit for families and children. You’re not really solving puzzles so much as making some light deductions.

There was one answer that felt like it had been written for a slightly different version of the question, and a second one that even once we had the answer, we weren’t certain lined up with the artwork on the cards.

The game looks lovely with beautiful, rich, colorful artwork. Some of the runes are a little too similar, making hunting through them frustrating when you first start the game. But we did like the mechanic of finding cards that then only get revealed at the end of the chapter. It’s a clever way to progress the story but it also feels like a reward. You’ve answered all the questions, and now you get to look at those cards you found earlier.

The Flashback game system is clever and fun, and hopefully more gets done with it. There’s still a lot of room for unique ways to use it. Flashback: Lucy is enjoyable and a good fit for families — if an adult group is playing it, they should be aware that they’re mostly just going to be getting the experience of unfolding the story and discovering the different mechanics included in the game. It’s not much of a brain teaser, but it still makes for an enjoyable evening and since nothing gets destroyed, it can absolutely be passed on to others.

Pros: Great story told in a very engaging way, a unique mechanic used in each chapter, good game system, a good fit for families

Cons: Not very challenging for adults, the rune symbols used are very similar, issues with a couple of the questions

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.