11:57

I cannot stand the social deduction game Werewolf, nor its dominant variant One Night Ultimate Werewolf. In both, players are assigned secret roles as the denizens of the unfortunate village where the events take place. Perhaps you will be the Troublemaker, swapping player roles while others sleep, or the Insomniac, who wakes up in the middle of the night to check their role. You may well be the werewolf, terrorizing the town and ripping innocents to shreds.

The goal of the game depends on your role, but most of the villagers want to figure out who the werewolf is and execute them. The game alternates between Days, when players discuss and accuse and vote to execute, and Nights, when players close their eyes and specific individuals are prompted to perform actions corresponding to their roles. One player is the Narrator, a thankless position that has been replaced in recent years by an app, who times the Days and leads the other players through the script for the Night phase.

Werewolf is extremely popular, and I’m happy for those who enjoy it. Just don’t make me play. There aren’t many games I would pass up…

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If I may, I’d like to begin by wading into unexpected waters. In mathematics, a combination is the term for a calculation to find the number of ways to choose a certain sized sample from a larger group. If you had three unique objects and you wanted to choose two of them, there are three possible ways to accomplish the goal. If you had ten objects and you wanted to choose four, the possibilities jump to 210. 

If you had 243 unique objects, and you wanted to choose 70, you would find an astronomical figure. A vigintillion, in fact. 1.3 x 10^62 to be exact. That’s a number that lingers somewhere between the utterly incomprehensible octillion and the even more impenetrable googol. I’m not sure who first coined the term astronomical for numbers beyond the scope of human understanding, but they were on to something. It’s hard enough to fathom one million of anything, let alone more—the scope reaches cosmic proportions.  

But I suppose you didn’t come here for math. You came here for murder. 

Awkward Guests was designed by Ron Gonzalo García and developed by the team at Megacorpin Games. Building on the tradition of classic whodunnit games like Clue and Mystery of the Abbey, Awkward Guests utilizes a deck of cards, a map, and a series of…

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I’m a big fan of ThinkFun, Inc. and their brain teaser family of games for all ages. Our family owns Rush Hour, Rush Hour Jr., Roller Coaster Challenge, and Zingo! 1-2-3, plus I’ve played a few other ThinkFun games when my kids have visited their friends’ homes.

Kids of all ages need games that stretch the mind, and even when helping my kids play a round of Rush Hour Jr., I sometimes need an extra minute or two (or five) to solve the current challenge at hand. I have been consistently impressed with their products, so when the opportunity came to preview ThinkFun’s new Cold Case series of games, I jumped at the chance.

The escape room/single-play mystery game field seems crowded to the point of possible oversaturation; the Exit: The Game product line, Unlock! from Space Cowboys, and many others are flooding the market with new ideas even as I push this review to publication. (We haven’t even mentioned that ThinkFun has their own series, Escape the Room, for larger groups too!)

Do the Cold Case games blaze a new trail or deepen a rich marketplace? Read on to learn about my spoiler-free experience with the first two games in the series.

[caption id="attachment_230543" align="alignnone" width="1920"]…

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Buy That Time You Killed Me on Amazon

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Decktective: Nightmare in the Mirror is a small-box co-op mystery game that’s playable in under 2 hours. While it can only be played once, it can be reset for other would-be sleuths to use without any serious issues. The game itself consists of a box, a numbered deck of cards, and a handful of plastic clips. The deck will provide both instructions on how to proceed through the game as well as information about the case at hand. At the end, the players will be collectively scored on their understanding of the mystery, with points awarded for correct solutions. Can your group get all the possible points and crack the case? 

If you’ve already read our review of Decktective: Bloody-Red Roses, you’ll have an idea of what to expect from Nightmare…

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If they say that great things come in small packages, then it must be a good sign that MicroMacro: Crime City ships with an honest to goodness magnifying glass in the box. MicroMacro: Crime City combines the excitement of “finding Waldo” with the thrill of investigating unsolved crimes and bringing the perps to justice. This recent release from Pegasus Spiele and designer Johannes Sich won the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award in 2021. Let’s dive in and find out just why it took home board gaming’s top prize.

Overview

In MicroMacro: Crime City players solve cases by locating clues on an intricately detailed map of a fictional city. But it’s not just buildings you’ll find on this map, no; it’s people too! The illustrators Daniel Goll, Tobias Jochinke, and Johannes Sich have captured an entire city at its best, and worst. The map is so epic in its scale and scope that it’s almost bigger than an 8 year old.

Gameplay

At its heart, MicroMacro: Crime City is a “find it” style puzzle, the most famous of which is the Where’s Waldo franchise. Players receive a packet of cards which pose questions to the investigators (players).…

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Buy UNDO: 600 Seconds on Amazon.

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You can also read our written review of Chronicles of Crime: 1400 or check out our written preview of the original Chronicles of Crime and its expansion, Noir.

Buy Chronicles of Crime: 1400 on Amazon

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In this review only components from the Tutorial will be shown, although any potential spoilers will be hidden in a collapsible window with a Spoiler alert on it. In all other ways, this review is spoiler-free.

C'est la cité sur toutes couronnée,
Fonteine et puis de sens et de clergie,
Sur le fleuve de Saine située :
Vignes, bois a, terres et praerie.
De touz les biens de ceste mortel vie
     A plus qu'autres citez n'ont;
Tuit estrangier l'aiment et ameront,
Car, pour deduits et pour estre jolis,
Jamais cité tele ne trouveront :
Riens ne se puet comparer à Paris.

- Excerpt from the poem Quant j'ay la terre et mer avironnée by Eustache Deschamps (1346-1406)

Riens ne se puet comparer à Paris. Nothing can compare to Paris. In the 21st century, these words perfectly describe how I feel about the city; there is no place in the world that compares to it. That said, I’m not sure I would still feel this way if I travelled back in time to the 1400 Medieval Paris that Deschamps describes. The church bells ringing incessantly to mark the various calls to prayer throughout the day, the crowded and noisy streets bustling with…

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Chronicles of Crime: Noir expands the app-driven 2018 hit with four new scenarios, new components, and a new theme. Dust off your fedora, throw on your trench coat, and don’t forget to take a jorum of skee as you jump into the role of a private detective in post-WWII Hollywood and Los Angeles.

This review assumes the reader is familiar with the Chronicles of Crime base game and only dives into what the Noir expansion introduces to its gameplay. If you’re unfamiliar with Chronicles of Crime, check out our preview to learn how the game works.

[caption id="attachment_20255" align="aligncenter" width="730"] Many components from Noir (shown with the hat icon) replace the components in the base game. However, you still need the Evidence Category cards, Evidence board, and Special Item cards from Chronicles of Crime. The app is also required to play.[/caption]

Chronicles of Crime: Noir Gameplay

In Chronicles of Crime: Noir, you’re playing a private detective so you don’t work for any police department (unlike in the base game). Unfortunately this means you don’t have the same access to field and medical specialists like you do in Chronicles of Crime. In some Noir scenarios, you might have allies or informants such…

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In this review anything that might be considered a spoiler is hidden in a collapsible window with a spoiler alert on it. In all other ways, this review is spoiler-free.

Decktective, from the same publisher as Deckscape — in case you didn’t guess by the name — is a cooperative mystery-solving game for 1 to 6 players detectives. Decktective can only be played through once, but there is no component destruction in the game so it can be passed on to other gamers once you’re finished with it. Similar to Deckscape, Decktective also uses just a deck of cards to provide players with information to help them solve the case. A game will last about 60 minutes and at the end players are asked a series of questions about the case. For each question answered correctly, players score points — and the goal is to score the most points.

Decktective: Bloody-Red Roses is the first standalone game in the Decktective series. The case begins with the visiting Duke of York discovering the lifeless body of Count Ferdinand Tudor in a bush of bloody roses; it’s up to the players to go through all the evidence and determine whether his death was an accident or a murder.

How to Play Decktective: Bloody-Red Roses

Setup

The game begins…

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*This is a non-spoiler preview of Legacy: Quest for a Family Treasure by Argyx Games

Puzzles

I have loved games for as long as I remember; I spent many childhood days around a jigsaw puzzle with my grandmother. I still remember the outstanding experience with my first escape room at The Escape Game in Nashville, TN. This started me down a bit of an adult puzzle addiction. If you like puzzles, check out Meeple Mountain’s escape room game content. I won’t even go into my discovery of my first alternate reality game (ARG). Let’s just say it swallowed up my life and time, and I’m lucky I still have a job or a marriage. So when Argyx Games approached Meeple Mountain for a demo of their newest title Legacy: Quest for a Family Treasure, I couldn’t say “Yes!” quickly enough.

[caption id="attachment_22797" align="aligncenter" width="730"] Legacy: Quest for a Family Treasure episode two Hellas 2019 components (computer not included).[/caption]

Argyx Games

Argyx Games is a Parisian game studio and publishing company specializing in ARG-style games that are handcrafted and limited edition. The studio was founded by the two game designers, Mathias Daval and Johanna Pernot. I’ve known them for their “Pocket Investigation” titles,…

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The basic synopsis of Blood on the Clocktower sounds very similar to the classic Werewolf with almost everything stripped down. There are numerous changes to the werewolf formula but still retains the usual night and day phases, announcing deaths, and voting on executions as one would expect.

In Werewolf tradition, a player eliminated by either the nightly murder or daytime execution is removed from the game. Blood on the Clocktower modifies this by allowing the murdered player to continue participating in the game but with caveats: they lose their role ability and have only a single one-time-use “ghost vote”…

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