Explore and revisit an abandoned theme park in this GM-less game for 2-5 players. As children, the characters will experience the park in all its glory; as adults, they’ll reflect on the changes that have occurred for the park and themselves in the intervening years. Easy-to-learn rules help players navigate the emotional complexity of innocence, ennui, discovery, and loss over the course of a single session.

Here We Used to Fly uses questionnaire-style Playbooks to represent a character at two points in their life: as children and as adults. As players explore the amusement park they'll choose various Attractions to visit. Each Attraction has a description and a list of scene prompts for both the childhood and adulthood phases. Players collaboratively select a few specific features that evoke the Attraction during their childhood and then play through a round of childhood scenes using open-ended prompts unique to each Attraction. They'll repeat the process using the adulthood descriptions and prompts before moving on to the next Attraction. Once everyone feels they've explored the park in full, they'll head home to reflect on what they've learned and how they've changed.

Quick Stats

• 2-5 players, one of which should be familiar with the rules 2-5 players

• 2-5 hours to tell a full, rich story
• Designed for one-shots or short-run "campaigns"
• No Game Master: this game tells a collaborative, shared narrative
• Tools for online and offline play, for friends close by or far away
• Nostalgic, bittersweet tone for stories that feel like a sad-happy indie film

I just love this game so so very very much. It's something really special.

— Jeff Stormer, creator of Anyone Can Wear the Mask and Party of One

How it Works

Each character in Here We Used to Fly is built using two questionnaire-style Playbooks. One represents their childhood self, while the other represents their adult self. A Playbook is defined by a dominant emotion: for example, a character might be Kind or Angry or Spacey. Players answer leading questions to develop their characters, using their two Playbooks as an emotional map to find out who they are and how they changed.

Once all players have completed their Playbooks, they begin exploring the amusement park by choosing an Attraction to visit. Each Attraction features two separate descriptions, divided between childhood and adulthood. Players collaboratively select a few features that evoke the Attraction during their childhood, such as “a fast-talking operator” or “the smell of chlorine”. Then they play through a round of childhood scenes, pulling from open-ended scene prompts unique to each Attraction like “making a promise” or “a bit of a meltdown”.

Once everyone’s led a childhood scene, the players flash forward to their characters as adults. This time, players pull from the adulthood list of features and prompts to imagine the Attraction as an abandoned remnant of what it used to be, each character starring in another scene as adults. This process repeats with a new Attraction and another round of both childhood and adulthood scenes until everyone is satisfied with their visit.

A thoughtful, meticulously-crafted game that promises introspection, nostalgia, and discovery in equal measure.

— Jason Morningstar, creator of Fiasco and Night Witches

What's Included

• A 68-page book and PDF featuring 15 Attractions, 14 Playbooks, and 25 unique illustrations.
• An audiobook version of the rules as a zipped folder of .mp3 files
• Our eternal gratitude, probably