If you love games, head to Central Library over three weekends in March to collect the Chapters card game developed by NLB together with volunteers and partners!
To celebrate NLB’s 30 years of history, a tableau card game Chapters is beautifully designed for anyone! Simply show that you are a library member and have the NLB Mobile app installed to take home your own copy of Chapters, as well as limited-edition poster and postcards featuring Chapters art.
What Chapters is About
Chapters: A Libraries and Archives Game is a game where 2 to 4 players use library and archives features to build a library or archives and invite friends over to win as many Hearts as possible. The more friends or patrons, the more hearts!
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There are a few modes of the game. The casual mode is more child-friendly ignores score modifiers on the Friends card.
There is also a NSFL – Not Safe For Libraries mode which allows players to sabotage each other with events that turn the quiet library into a battleground.
Another advanced mode is the Libraries and Archive site abilities for more strategy in the game play.
But let’s start from the basics.
How to Play Chapters
The box contains various components. First each player takes a site card, there are four in total.
57 feature cards are features you can build with a maximum of five features displayed. The features allow you to invite friends to your library depending on their needs.
The three categories of needs are: content, programme and space.
21 Event Cards can be used for various purposes, change up the friends deck, discard and swop cards and more.
The Molly meeple is the adorable little bus everyone can use to assist them on their turn, especially when supplementing features to attract friends.
At each turn, players can choose to take one action per turn. The action can be building a feature, inviting a friend from the lobby, play an event or invite Molly to your deck.
To win the game, players need to get the best combination of Friends and Features to win the most Hearts.
The game ends when the Closing Time card is shown at the bottom of the friends deck. Each player takes a final turn and counts the number of hearts accordingly.
Our Verdict on Chapters
First up, I love the illustrations and designs of the game. The team worked with local illustrators who produced lovely renditions of library and archive buildings. The colours and images gave me a sense of nostalgia and I was especially glad to see the expansion set containing an image of the OG red-bricked National Library I grew up visiting.
On game play, this game’s premise is simple – to attract as many patrons to your library as possible. It was quite straightforward and playing one round takes between 30 to 45 minutes. A little more time was needed to digest the text on each card. For instance, you get more hearts if there are more diverse groups of friends in your library.
Upon successfully inviting a friend, you can also build on top of your existing features to invite others with differing needs.
I got to learn more about library features while playing the game and was surprised at how long certain features have been introduced. As a library user, I would have taken many of these for granted.
It was fun playing Chapters reading the different friends and patrons of the library. This also tickled me seeing the various archetypes, with some of them seemingly familiar.
Tweens and teens can probably get used to the game pace and play advanced modes once they are more familiar.
Get Your Own Copy of Chapters
Chapters will be made available for redemption at Central Library over the coming weekends: 14 to 15 March as well as 11 to 12 April.
Show your NLB Mobile app installed and library membership to get a free copy!
