Alice is Missing

^{review by K}

Alice is Missing is a unique role-playing game, in that it is played solely through texting. It is a silent RPG, where players face a mystery together in finding Alice Briarwood, a high school junior who hasn’t been seen in a couple of days. Alice is Missing takes place in a sleepy northern California town named Silent Falls in December. You play as her friends and/or family members tracking her down and trying to find clues as to her whereabouts and who might be responsible for her sudden disappearance.

The game itself takes about 90 minutes of preparation time to determine the pre-game relationships between the characters, to go over the basics of play and any TTRPG safety tools, such as use of the X tool, lines and veils, etc., and to add players to a chat to get the game going. My recommendation is to use the Alice is Missing Discord server created by Hunters Entertainment; it includes roles and chats pre-created, so the facilitator can just simply add the players and assign them roles in the Discord server for their respective characters. After that’s complete, the facilitator can start the 90 minute timer - there’s only 90 minutes to find out what’s happened to Alice. Hunters Entertainment also created an animated timer on YouTube with a soundtrack for the game; the soundtrack was specifically curated for the experience of sitting in silence with an urgent task.

In the pre-game preparation, players will be assigned time cards that will get played during the timer. For example, Jack Briarwood might have the 50-minute card, which means the player taking on the role of Jack will read the card and integrate it into the game somehow. This could involve finding out new information about Alice’s disappearance or create some other conflict and interpersonal issues to resolve during the game.

Something quite impactful about this game is that there’s an urgency that can’t be resolved by just sitting and waiting around. Each player must be involved in the moment, because 90 minutes will pass by much quicker than one thinks. I’ve played Alice is Missing a handful of times, and each time is a memorable and heavy game. By design, it is a very emotionally heavy game and that’s something that I really admire about it.

Alice is Missing is available now from our webstore.