Origin Story is a superhero-themed, trick-taking game.
Title: Origin Story
Year Published: 2025
Designer: Jamey Stegmaier, Pete Wissinger
Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Players: 1-5
Game Time: ~45 minutes
Set-up Time: ~5 minutes
Ages: 14+
Theme: An original Superhero universe.
Mechanisms: Trick-taking
How to win: Score the most points over 5 rounds of trick-taking and character development.
Your inner superhero is ready to emerge, one chapter at a time. Reveal your backstory, gather gadgets and allies, develop a grudge against your archenemy, and unleash an ultimate ability as you transform. Use a combination of brains, love, speed, and strength to craft your origin story.
How to play Origin Story
Learn how to play Origin Story and the rules for a 2-player game in a quick and concise way.
Main Mechanisms
Trick-taking drives the game, and everything around it supports that. There is an element of ‘action selection’ in that you decide which powers to charge each round.
Theme
It’s a new (I think) superhero world, with characters you evolve as you play.
Setup & Rulebook
Setup involves shuffling some decks and dealing out cards. It doesn’t take too long.
The rulebook is short and does a good job of covering the rules.
Components & Artwork
The cards and tokens are all good. But, I would suggest that if you’re planning on playing this a lot, sleeve the playing cards.
The artwork is nice, and I always say how much I like cartoony art on a white background.
Ease of Teaching
It can be a bit fiddly, even if all players are familiar with trick-taking.
Timing around the charging and activation of powers, as well as some of the powers themselves, can be tricky.
Similar Games
I bought this because it reminded me of Rebel Princess, which also has trick-taking with player powers and events.
Origin Story Review
Positives
A cool game around a familiar mechanism.
The powers in every game make it different each time you play.
The art is cool.
The event card really changes up that one round…
Negatives
…and one round only. And sometimes it’s only a minor change.
If you get the right powers, you can play as the villain to avoid tricks. It’s really easy and quite dull.
Origin Story Round-Up
A very fun trick-taking game with a lot of replayability.
Rating
I give it 6/10