Tangled Blessings

^{review by K}

Tangled Blessings is a solo role-playing game, where the main mechanics are centered around drawing tarot cards for prompts, and journaling your character's thoughts, feelings, and actions. There is also an option to play the game with two players! The setting takes place in a cursed magical academy for adults, where students learn different areas of magic and mystery, and can be played between 2 and 4 hours.

In the solo version of the game, the player decides any character background; where they’re from, who they’re friends with, what brought them to the academy. Drawing from a tarot deck, the player also answers questions provided by the book, and determines which house they belong to, which may or may not reflect their actual characteristics. The player also draws a card from the Major Arcana to determine their rival. The rival is an important aspect of the game, and the player will be competing against their rival during the end stages of the game as their final exam before moving on from the academy. For a rival example, the player draws the Wheel of Fortune from the Major Arcana, this rival is “The Guilty Adept,” which means that the player’s rival can be described as someone who puts little effort into their work, but still somehow manages to come out on top. There is a feeling of guilt within them, but might be largely powering through based on natural skills, or the thought of overcoming the player in any challenge.

In the two-player version of the game, both players are each other’s rival, there is no game master. The players still draw tarot cards for prompts at various points of the game, and face each other head-to-head for their final exam before graduating from the academy.

This role-playing game drew me in from the cover art alone, but conceptually this game is quite appealing to me. A cursed magical academy horror adventure? Sign me up for that any day. I really enjoy the idea of using tarot cards to determine prompts and be able to journal my progress. Tangled Blessings has great replayability for this too - since every playthrough can be done differently, with a different rival or player house placement!

Tangled Blessings is available now from our webstore.