Once Upon a Time is a card game produced by Atlas Games, originally released in 1994 with a second edition published in 1995 and the current third edition in 2012. One object of Once Upon a Time is to tell a fairy tale as a group. While the story is developed by the whole group, the competitive aspect of the game is that each player has an individual goal of using all of the "Storytelling" cards he or she has in hand, and finishing the story with their own special "Happy Ever After" card. Only one player at a time is the current storyteller, giving him or her a chance to play their Storytelling cards, while the other players have a chance to "interrupt" the story and become the storyteller if, for example, the storyteller mentions something on one of the interrupting player's cards.
Gameplay
Each player is dealt a hand of cards that represent story elements: objects, people, events, and "aspects" often involved in fairy tales. These "Storytelling" cards represent ingredients of a fairy tale, i.e. words or phrases that are likely to appear in fairy tales. From a different deck of cards, each player is also dealt a single "Happy Ever After" ending card, to be kept secret from other players until it is used. The object of the game for each player is to use their cards in telling a story, finishing the story by using their Happy Ever After card. One player at a time is the storyteller. Whenever a story ingredient is mentioned, if any player has a Storytelling card for that ingredient, he or she can play it and become the storyteller. A player may be required to draw extra Storytelling cards. If the storyteller ends the story with the ending on their Happy Ever After card, and is out of cards, he or she wins. Players are expected to cooperate in order to avoid contradictions in the story as it develops, for the story to make sense, and that any ending to the story is "satisfying".
The 3rd edition also has a Writer's Handbook available, in trade paperback format.
Awards and critical reception
Zy Nicholson reviewed the second edition of Once Upon a Time for Arcane magazine, rating it a 7 out of 10 overall. Nicholson comments that "Although I'm well aware that the first edition did receive some rave reviews, I'm going to award this a respectable but cautious score." Spike Y. Jones reviewed Once Upon a Time for Pyramid #6 and stated that "The rules are simple enough that children and grandparents can all play at the same time, and the game is so engrossing that even people who look down on your roleplaying activities would be willing to join you in a bit of this sort of storytelling. Whether you're buying Once Upon A Time for yourself, or to give to a gaming friend or non-gaming relative, this is one card game which won't sit on a shelf gathering dust." Commenting on the second edition for Pyramid #18, reviewer Derek Pearcy said the game "is a brilliant example of what we should be getting in this new game market" and "not only is this game easy to learn, not only is it fast, fun, and an Idea Whose Time Has Come, but... girls think it rocks" commenting upon "the occasional insulting lip-service to their female readership." In 1999 Pyramid magazine named Once Upon a Time as one of The Millennium's Best Card Games and also as one of The Millennium's Most Underrated Games. Editor Scott Haring stated "the game's just as good for kids as it is for adults." In his 2007 essay on the game in , British author and game designerMarc Gascoigne stated that Once Upon a Time is "one of the best ways ever found to grab a non-gamer by their imagination and fling them into our world". Other awards include:
Once Upon a Time 2nd Edition was named to Games magazine's Best Family Card Game section in the 1997 Games 100 list.
