I have an addiction, and that’s backing projects, mainly games, on Kickstarter, receiving the physical games or PDFs, and then doing nothing with them.

One that I really wanted to play was Alice is Missing from Hunters Entertainment. I had thought that the Kickstarter sounded interesting. The game is played through text message (or other text based communication) between the players. That novelty was enough to have me back it on Kickstarter.

But, problem #1 is that it’s built for play in person (COVID-19 threw a wrench into that), problem #2 is that despite it having a Roll20 module specifically for online play and rules for online play, I thought the Roll20 interface was sort of clunky and/or didn’t really make sense to me, and I just let the game collect dust.

Then - I found that someone had made a Discord bot that automates most of the gameplay for you. I’ve run it twice, and both times were emotionally punchy. Playing the game through text lets one get more immersed in the persona they’re playing, plus makes it harder to see the friend behind their character, since you can’t physically see that they’re not their character. The game itself has a fixed 90 minute run time, so there isn’t really any surprise as to when the game is going to end, although setup time can be done in minutes, or it might take an additional 90 minutes, depending on how much work everyone wants to put into defining elements of the game. Furthermore, it includes a soundtrack that really does a fine job of setting the tone for the game.

There is a 3 hour long actual play of the game with Spenser Starke available, if you want to see how it’s played.

I’d recommend this one, and I’d also encourage you to check out the Discord bot. It’s incredibly well made, and I’m imaging that it’s actually better than just spreading out in someone’s living room and texting the other people in the room. If Hunter’s Entertainment ever does a similar format game as Alice is Missing - I really hope they contact the developer of the Discord bot and make them part of the team. I don’t think I’ve ever played anything like it before, and I look forward to playing more of it in the future.