Nanofictionary is made up of a box with 110 cards and a rulebook.

The deck consist of 12 prize cards (divided between grand prizes and runners-up), 6 story completion bonus cards (labelled 1-6), and 92 story cards. The cards are all printed on solid cardstock with rounded corners.

The fronts of the story cards each display the type of card, its name, and a picture. Most of the cards are plot devices: characters, settings, problems, and resolutions. There are also action cards which allow for various actions to be taken in-game.

The artwork on the cards are all simple, stylized, black and white drawings. The artwork takes up the majority of space on all of the cards except the actions. The card type and name have nicely color-coded backgrounds which make it easy to see which plot devices you have and which you still need.

The rulebook is 20-pages long (but only card-sized!), printed in black-and-white. The rules are very basic and well presented with some discussion of how to properly tell the stories.

Overall, the components of Nanofictionary are very simple. Compared to the average card game out there, I can only give them a "2" out of "5" for Style. However, I'd suspect this was a purposeful aesthetic decision. By keeping the drawings so simple, Nanofictionary ensures that the players will have that much more room to fill in the blanks and truly tell their own stories. A production with shinier, more colorful cards might well help to stifle the creativity that's at the heart of this game.

The play of Nanofictionary is very simple. You start out with 5 cards in your hand. Every turn you draw one, play one. (Alternatively, if you don't wish to play, you may discard as much as you want and then draw back up to 5.)

There are two types of cards, actions and plot devices. The plot devices are the core of the game; they're the aforementioned characters, settings, problems, and resolutions. Each card portrays a unique story element. For example, there's "the little black cat" (a character), "on the grounds of the insane asylum" (a setting), "suddenly a fight broke out" (a problem), and "they were finally rescued!" (a resolution). These elements form the backbone of the story you're going to tell.

You play your plot devices face-up in front of you; the only exception is the resolution which is played face-down, to preserve a sense of drama in your story. Your story must include at least one of each plot device. Your story may contain more than one character, but may not contain more than one of any of the other plot devices (except with a special "action" card). Once your story meets the minimum requirements for a story, and you're happy with it, you take a story completion bonus card (numbered between 1 and the number of players in the game).

Instead of playing a plot device you may play an action. These cards have various affects including: being able to play a second setting, problem, or resolution; taking a plot device from another story; taking a card from the discard pile; and getting to choose from a large selection of cards.

It should be noted that all play is simultaneous each turn. This works really well because it dramatically speeds up the game, and direct interaction is limited, so there's no concern about bashing into other people.

Once everyone has a complete story, the "writing phase" of the game is over. Then the "storytelling phase" of the game begins.

Starting with the player with the highest story completion bonus card, each player tells his story. It should involve all of his cards and shouldn't have any notable plot devices not featured on cards. It should be short, though it doesn't have to be limited to the 55 words that this game is based upon. The players each have slight ability to vary what's on the cards, but overall they're a blueprint.

After all the players have told their stories, each player votes for his favorite two stories (grand prize and runner-up). Then any observers ("jurors") are allowed to vote for their favorite story also. Each person is then awarded a total score equal to: number of plot devices in their story + story completion bonus card value + 3 points per "grand prize" + 1 point per "runner up" + 2 points per juror vote. It's very easy to calculate; the person with the highest total wins.

The game really does take only 30-45 minutes to play, just like the box says.

Game Variants

Looney Labs tends to make games with components that are simple or abstract enough that they encourage different game variants to be made. This is true for Nanofictionary.

The rules include a variant called "Anthology" where a judge lays out a set of plot device cards, each player tells a different story based on those cards, and then the judge awards a grand prize and runner-up among the storytellers. Play continues until everyone has been judge once, then points are totalled.

Overall, Nanofictionary does a very good job of acting as a catalyst to tell fun and interesting stories. It's one of the more creative games out there and could be a real change of pace from more strategy oriented games.

Here's some of the best game design aspects:

Quick & Easy to Play: This tends to be an element of most Andrew Looney games. Nanofictionary literally takes a couple of minutes to explain to a player who's never tried it before. Then, it plays very quickly. This is helped considerably by the very good decision to make much of the play simultaneous.