Do you think you can teach grumpy ol’ Scrooge the error of his ways, and help him change for the better? Here’s your chance to prove it! Take on the roles of the three spirits of Christmas and guide Scrooge through his journey of redemption. You can only help him if you work together.

What Is It?

🥅The Goal is to work through the 3 chapters without running out of the coins or cards necessary to complete each chapter’s shadow scenes
⚙️Cooperative – Work together to succeed
⚙️Hand Management – Players need to use the cards in their hands to complete shadow scenes. They have a hand limit of 7, and the deck will not reshuffle if they go through all the cards
⚙️Action Selection/Rondel – Players move the spirit token around the rondel to select what action they will do on their turn. They’ll have to pay coins for how many spaces they want to move it. They can move Scrooge to different cards, give cards among the plays, draw cards into their own hands, or play cards to complete shadow scenes

Who Is It For?

👥1 to 6 Players – I enjoyed the solo; felt like I got to experience the “puzzle” element of planning out moves a bit more. I think it works well any any count, but the more players, the more you really need to be able to communicate what your best moves are with the cards you have in hand
👥Ages 12 & Up – Pretty streamlined rules, plus being cooperative, it is easy to help less experienced players. There are also a few variants to change the difficulty
👥Fans of cooperative games, A Christmas Carol, and games where you have to strategically plan your moves turn to turn

PROS

🟢Aesthetics – Nice art
🟢Components – Chunky wooden figures are nice, cards and cardboard pieces are good quality
🟢Unique theme
🟢Rules are well-written
🟢Turns are snappy; gameplay is smooth
🟢Plenty of variability thanks to included variants to change difficulty, play solo, or adjust general gameplay

CONS

🔴The game can end very abruptly if you lose (run out of money), which doesn’t feel great
🔴The solo hand limit felt very restrictive, especially since you start off with max cards
🔴Some gifts definitely felt more useful than others

Final Thoughts

Overall, I thought the gameplay worked well. It was generally very tight where you really have to communicate and plan your best course of action so that you aren’t spending too much money or having “dead” turns. I thought the solo was a little more challenging due to the hand limit, and always needing to have the right cards for all the shadow scenes, but that made it feel a bit like a puzzle, which worked for me.

With the basic gameplay, the game won’t feel super different play to play, but if you utilize some of the variants, that will help to help it fresh. I think if this theme appeals to you, and you’re a fan of co-op (or solo) games, then it’s definitely worth checking out!

Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 6.5/10

Designer – John S. Bailey
Artist – Emmie Bailey
Publisher – Humble Bard Games
MSRP – $39.99
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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