*AD – the item in this review was gifted to our household for this post. All opinions, as always, are our own.
When it comes to fun new games to play with the whole family, we are always looking for something different. After Jupiter and I reviewed an escape room which we received in the post we’ve been interested in more of these sort of mailed mystery games. When we heard about Save Christmas, a mystery, role playing game aimed at families with young children, we figured it would be a perfect evening event for the holidays!
Save Christmas can be bought as a physical game, as we had, or you can pick up a Zoom-friendly version if you want to play with some of your friends online. Save Christmas is a 3 to 12 player game, with that number including the host, who also gets to play a character. This is notable because the storytelling doesn’t specifically frame an elf, that’s left for the players. The premise of Save Christmas is simple. Santa needs to leave with all of the toys in an hour. However, the elves have discovered that all of the toys have been stolen, and they need to figure out – between them – which of them was responsible. The game runs for about an hour, with discussion and role play heavily promoted.
The host reads off the story, giving their own twists and turns if they like, and then each player receives a character envelope. Inside that there is an A4 page for each player, which works as a character card. They all have a short description of why they may have stolen toys, as well as some information on other characters and an alibi as to where they were during the time of the crime – if they have an alibi, that is. Once everyone has told their alibi, the timer begins, with only 30 minutes to speculate before the next phase. Each player should realistically start chatting away, and this is likely to happen because some character’s cards specifically state that they want to frame other characters for their own reasons. Other characters are just simply trying to figure out what is going on because they’d like to save Christmas. There is a digital video that can be watched as part of the next phase, this gives out ‘clues’ every 5 minutes, however, we weren’t really sure how valid these clues were. Things like cookies and candycanes didn’t make a lot of sense to us, neither did the clue of “one player needs to sing their replies for the next 5 minutes” but two of the slides were very helpful in solving the mystery for us.
Once the time is over, everyone is given sheets to write down their name, who they think did the crime, and why. From there, answers are collected and read to the host, before the true criminal is revealed and the awards are handed out. I found the awards to be interesting, as if the criminal gets away with it, they also win an award. Save Christmas is one of those games that are great for those who like to pretend and become a character, committing to them. It’s a simple enough game that younger players can end up playing along (especially if you give them one of the non-essential characters) which is a real bonus in a family role playing game. It’s a great way to get kids to use their imaginations, and it’s a great little evening activity.
This post is apart of our Blogmas series, with each and every post being about Christmas or Winter.
As someone who plays a lot of role playing games – or at least I did until this year – I love this idea, especially the fact that they’ve made it Zoom meeting friendly! This is really cool!
It’s such a great concept!