Orapa Mine

Orapa Mine is a game from Korea. You are mining specialists and your company is about to start mining a huge gemstone mine. Your job is to detect the exact positions of the gems. You do this by directing ultrasound signals into the ground and observing how these signals are reflected by the gems. 

The game is for 2 to 5 players. With 2 players, each sets up a puzzle, and you race to figure out your opponent's puzzle. With 3 or more players, only person needs to be the facilitator and sets up a puzzle. The others are the players competing to be first to solve the puzzle. 

The puzzle is five wooden pieces placed on a grid. On your turn, you shoot a signal from a specific position. State that by referring to a number or an alphabet along the edge of the grid, and your opponent or the facilitator tells you where the reflected signal comes out, and what colour it is. Whenever the incoming signal hits a gem, it is reflected. The angle of reflection depends on the angle of the gem face it hits. Depending on the colour of the gem, the signal turns into that colour. If it hits gems in two or more colours, it becomes a composite colour. The position the signal exits the grid and its colour are the information you can use to solve the puzzle. 

On the inside of the screen you can see all the colour combinations. The colour of the outgoing signal tells you the colours the signal has hit and bounced off. For example if the outgoing signal is green, it means the signal has hit blue and yellow gems. 

Every player gets a sheet like this to record the clues and to calculate the positions of the gems.

Orapa Mine offers quite a unique gameplay experience. I find it very interesting. There is some strategy in how you set up your puzzle. You want to make it hard for your opponent to work out the positions and orientations of the gems. I did a two-player game. I needed to delay my opponent working out my solution so that I had more time to work out his. You also need to put some thought into where to direct your signal. You want every turn to count and to give you more information. This game is a logic puzzle and it challenges your creativity in identify all the possible positions of the gems. You will do a lot of thinking. If you don't like that in games, you won't enjoy this. However if you like challenges, this game will give you a healthy dose. I get particularly excited when the outgoing signal is a mix of many colours. That's when things get really interesting. If you want to further spice things up, play with the advanced modules - a transparent gem which reflects the signal without changing its colour, and a dull black gem which absorbs the signal!

13 Ghosts

The Game

13 Ghosts is a deduction microgame. Every player holds one secret card, and everyone tries to guess one another’s card. Once your card is guessed correctly you are out. The last person standing wins.

The deck has 13 cards, numbered from 1 to 13. Every card has an ability you can use. Everyone starts with a secret card and also one hand card. On your turn you must play your hand card. If you play it face up, you get to use the ability on the card. Sometimes an ability allows you to ask your opponents a specific question about their secret. There are abilities which does other fancy stuff too, like letting you peek cards in the deck. If you play your card face down, you get to attempt to guess your opponents’ numbers. Guessing right eliminates the opponent holding that number. Since there are only 13 cards, the game is quite short.

The Play

The decision whether or not to play a card face up depends not just on whether you want to use the card ability. Whether you want to release information to your our opponents is an important consideration. Your opponents’ action will give you clues. When they guess a number, they probably don’t have that number. But then maybe they are doing it just to mislead you.

Sometimes it comes down to how lucky your guess is. If you sense your opponents already knows your number, on your turn you probably to just guess their number, so that you can eliminate them before they do the same.

The Thoughts

The game is a process of elimination. It’s very short. There is some luck. I found it slightly dull, like work - a short but not very interesting task. This is actually somewhat similar to Love Letter, but Love Letter is one of my favourite games and it doesn't feel dry. On your turn you have two cards to pick from. I like how the card powers interact. In 13 Ghosts you only have one card in hand. However you can still choose whether to play it face-up or face-down. It is still a meaningful decision. I think what was a turn-off for me was that feeling of checking off a list of numbers. 

The Secret Flower

The Game

The Secret Flower is a microgame from Singapore, by Daryl Chow and Daniel Lee. It is a cooperative deduction game. There are only 16 cards, numbered from 1 to 16. One of them is randomly removed face-down. The others are distributed to the players. Your goal is to find out the missing number. That is the secret flower. Every card features a different flower. The challenge in this game is you may not freely communicate information you have. You can only communicate through card play. After a fixed number of actions, everyone must be able to guess the secret flower correctly for you to win. 

During game setup, other than the secret flower, the rest of the cards are dealt out to players based on the player count. Some of a player's cards are to be placed face-down in a row before them, in order from small to large number. The other cards are held in the player's hand. During the game these cards will be played as actions. 

In addition to the number, a card has two other properties - whether it is herbaceous or woody, and what colour it is. The card also has a question. You pose the question to a specific face-down card belonging to a player in order to obtain and share information. 

During the game, players take turn playing cards. When a card is played on one of your face-down cards, you answer the question. This is how you share information with your teammates. When a card is played, the card itself also contributes to public information, because it is now exposed. You know what number it is, so you can rule it out as the secret flower. Once all cards are played, the players must immediately and simultaneously declare what they think the secret flower is. You win together only if everyone gets it right. 

This is a 2-player game in progress. The secret flower is in the middle. Cards which have been played as questions are face-up and tucked under the cards they are posed to. You can pose a question to your own card. This is for you to share information about your card to others. Also, a card can have more than one question posed to it. 

This is the card back. It is designed this way so that it also serves as a reference card. All 16 cards are listed here, showing their colours and also whether they are herbaceous or woody. 

The Play

So far I have only played this with 2 players. Jon likes this a lot and recommended it to me. The moment I started playing, I decided I needed to take notes. I used Jon's smartphone which has a stylus to take notes. I wrote down all 16 numbers and crossed out those I had seen. I also took notes when I managed to narrow down the possibilities of some of the face-down cards. It's possible to keep all this in your head, but I am too lazy to do so. 

The game is a process of elimination. You are not really meant to guess the secret flower. You go through a logical process to calculate what it is. If you play well, you should be able to work out what it is without needing to resort to guessing. One challenge though, is everyone must be able to work it out, not just one person. This is a game of logical reasoning. 

The icon in the top left corner indicates whether the card is herbaceous or woody. Along the edges of the card are the possible answers to the question on the card. 

I am guessing the 2-player game is easier than the 3- to 5-player games, because at the start of the game you'll have seen almost half the cards in the game. With more players, you initially have access to fewer cards. There will be more you need to figure out. 

The Thoughts

This game is a clever idea. It's short and sweet, and it gives your brain some exercise. This is a deduction game, so you do have to do some work. It is a group puzzle solving activity. You start with limited information. You need to work out how best to use the questions you have to uncover as much information as possible, so that everyone can work out the secret flower. 

I realise there is some similarity to Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs. 

The Search for Planet X

The Game

The Search for Planet X is a deduction game which uses a mobile phone app to handle the mystery you are trying to solve. Scientists have discovered a mysterious Planet X in the solar system. It cannot be detected directly using conventional equipment, but based on the movement of celestial bodies, we know it is out there somewhere. In this game you are the scientists. You do your respective observations and detections, and you compete to be first to accurately locate Planet X. You also publish scientific journals. When someone finds Planet X, the game ends. You add up your points, and the highest scorer wins. 

The game is for 1 to 4 players. These are the game components of the purple player. The square tiles are theory tokens, i.e. scientific papers, you can publish. If you think a certain sector of the sky has a particular type of celestial body, you can announce your theory. If you turn out to be right, you score points. If you are the first to publish, you score more. 

The game has two modes, and this above is the easy mode. The sky is divided into 12 sectors. In hard mode you have 16 sectors. At the start of a game every player gets a different set of information. In the night sky there are many types of celestial bodies - gas clouds, asteroids, comets and dwarf planets. They all have different characteristics. A section of sky has at most one object. A gas cloud is always next to an empty sector. A comet can only be found in specific sectors, e.g. sector 2, 3, 5, 7 and 11. An asteroid is always next to at least one other asteroid. You know how many of each of these objects there are in the sky. You need to piece together all this information, and also gather more data, to work out where Planet X is. 

This is one set of information that one player gets at the start of a game. 

The player pieces are observartories

There is no fixed player order. This game works like Tokaido and Thebes. It is always the player furthest behind a track who takes the next turn. Here, the track is a circular one around the game board. When you perform an action, it costs a certain amount of time, and you move your pawn that many steps along the track. At the centre of the board there is a disk which covers half of the sector numbers. This is called the earth board. Sectors with their numbers covered by the earth board are temporarily not observable by the players. At any time, only half the sky is accessible. The earth board rotates in response to player actions. It has a little arrow which will always point at the last player on the action track. Whenever that player moves, and there is no other player in the same segment, the earth board rotates, changing which sectors become available to everyone. This is nifty and thematic. 

The Search for Planet X is a deduction game. It is a puzzle solving exercise. You get a note sheet to help you record information you collect. Most actions in the game are related to gathering data. You can sweep a section of sky to see how many of a particular object type there are. You can target one specific sector to see what object it has. This of course is very powerful, so you can do this at most twice. Also this focused observation won't help you find Planet X, because it is not detectable. That sector will just appear to be empty. You need to know where the other objects are in order to calculate where Planet X is. 

You can research a particular object type. In game terms, this is looking at specific clues set up at the start of the game. The last thing you can do is to attempt to locate Planet X. You need to know not only its location. You must also know the objects in the two adjacent sectors. If you get this right, the game ends and everyone scores points. 

When the earth board rotation reaches certain positions (the easiest way to think of this is in certain months of the year) everyone gets a chance to publish theories. You attempt to guess which section has what object. You do so by placing one of your tiles facedown. You won't know yet whether you are correct. You have to wait for a future theory publication round before you know the results. The truth is handled by the app. You will use it frequently. 

In addition to piecing together the data you collect, you also have to watch what your opponents are doing. From their actions you can make guesses about what they might know, and also how close they are to finding Planet X. Whoever solves the position of Planet X has a good chance of winning, because the point value for doing that is high. Not a guarantee, but quite likely. 

The Play

I played the solo game and have not experienced a proper multiplayer game. My guess is playing with other humans will be more fun. In the solo game you still compete with a bot, so it's like playing a 2-player game. The bot's actions are managed by the mobile app. 

You start the game with some information already, and this is the basis from which you investigate further. The game is a process of elimination. You want to work out what object is in which segment, until eventually you find the only possible location of Planet X. Your opponents' action will give you some clues. The earth board restricts your actions and is something you have to plan around. If you miss an opportunity, you'll need to wait for the next cycle. This fits the setting very well. 

When you are ready to take a guess on Planet X, this is where you do it in the app. 

When you publish a theory, you place a square token in the outermost position. Every time there is an opportunity to publish theories, the tokens are moved one step inwards. When they reach the innermost position, they are revealed, and you use the app to check the correctness of the theories. When the game ends, all theories are revealed and scored, even if they have not reached the innermost positions. 

The rulebook has suggestions for now to take notes, but you can do it your own way. 

The Thoughts

The Search for Planet X is a clean design. There aren't many components. The rules are almost minimalistic. Most of the tedious stuff is handled by the app. I appreciate that. Some may feel that a boardgame should stay pure and not involve electronic devices. In this case, I like that the advantages of an app is utilised well to create a fresh experience for players. This is certainly not using an app for the sake of having it. 

This is fully a deduction game. There is not a lot of player interaction. You don't know a lot about what your opponents know. However you do feel that you are in a race to find Planet X. This is a game of logic and reasoning. If you like solving puzzles this will probably be your thing. I like that many elements of the game match the astronomy theme well. If you are into this kind of theme, this will be fun. 

boardgaming in photos: Dancing Queen concept art

18 Jun 2022. I participated in MyStartr's quarterly retreat, when the whole company stayed at a holiday house for 3D2N and had almost three full days of activities. In the evening during free-and-easy time I brought out my prototype Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It isn't easy finding opportunities to playtest this with a group of 10+. I grabbed the chance to do it. The game was quite challenging with this many people. Some of the players took out notebooks and phones to take notes. This is a deduction game. The more players there are, the more information there will be to be digested and cross-referred. Everyone contributes a little bit of information, and everyone tries to link up all the clues. 

This is my current prototype. All the artwork is found on the internet. I didn't do any of them. Snow White, Prince Charming, the dwarfs and the queen are all by different artists. I really like the dwarfs. If the game ever gets to the publishing stage, I should seriously look up the artist and commission his or her work. 

Prior to this I had only playtested the vanilla game with just Snow White and the dwarfs. Now that I had more players, I could test the Prince Charming variant. There are two Prince Charming variants. The first one is simple. Prince Charming is just one more player on Snow White's team. The whole reason I came up with Prince Charming was I felt Snow White was too lonely. This is a one-vs-many game, and for one player to go against a whole team of brains seems a little cruel. So in the basic Prince Charming variant, the prince is just a teammate to help Snow White. We didn't play this. I skipped directly to the advanced Prince Charming variant. 

In the advanced variant, Prince Charming starts undercover. He pretends to be one of the dwarfs and he'll get to see another dwarf's card. That means the Snow White team gets a little more information. If any dwarf chooses to look at Prince Charming's card, the prince's identity is exposed and he loses the ability to peek at a dwarf's card. There's about a 50% chance that Prince Charming will get to use his ability before being discovered. 

One thing that surprised me was this variant created a new objective for the dwarfs. Finding the prince felt like an achievement, a mission being completed. It might not actually matter a lot to winning or losing, but the experience and emotions created were real. The existence of a Prince Charming also became a source of jokes and teasing. I was reminded that the game experience is not limited to just game mechanisms or winning and losing. The art, the setting, even the names used all contribute to the play experience. 

I came up with the Evil Queen variant later on. I still have not yet playtested it. This variant turns the 2-faction game into a 3-faction game. It requires a bigger group too. I wonder whether this will make things a little too complicated. I am eager to try it out. 

I taught everyone to play Category 5 / Take 6. This might be the first time I saw this played by 10 players, which is the maximum number of players. This was quite exciting, because almost every turn someone would get burnt. This is a classic card game from Wolfgang Kramer. It is more than 20 years old now and has been published in many different incarnations. I am focusing on designing card games, so I should learn from these successful card games. 

Catch Me is a children's game from HABA I taught recently. This is a speed / dexterity game. Every player controls a mouse. The mice are placed at the centre of the table, with their tails extending outwards. The players hold on to the beads at the end of the tails. One player plays the cat and holds on to the wooden bowl. The cat player rolls the die, and depending on the colour rolled, he must try to catch the mouse of that colour using the bowl. The mouse tries to escape. The mouse player tries to pull his mouse away before it gets caught under the bowl. If the mouse gets caught, the mouse player becomes the cat player next round, and the cat player gets to become a mouse player. If the mouse escapes successfully, the cat player continues to be it next round. One important rule is if a mouse player makes any mistake, the penalty is becoming the cat player next round. E.g. red is rolled but the yellow mouse gets too excited and runs away. The yellow mouse player will become the cat next round. 

My work on Dancing Queen continues. My artist has come up with three pieces of concept art. I went to different groups of people to ask for input. I have my own preference, but what is more important is the preference of my target audience. I gather data to help me decide. 

This is the minimalistic style

This is the 80's-90's Japanese comic (manga) style

This is the modern animation style

The people I surveyed can be divided into three main categories. The first category is my friends and family, i.e. mostly Malaysians. They are a mix of boardgamers and normal people (ahem). The second category is a community of Malaysian game designers, so they are all boardgamers. The third category is a community of international game designers. The three groups have slightly different preferences. Overall the Japanese manga style won hands down. So this is the direction I'm heading in. One interesting thing I find is the international group has a strong preference for the minimalistic style. I had thought the modern animation style would win more votes. It did have many supporters, but at the final tally, it did about the same as the minimalistic style. 

I am very excited to see my game take shape bit by bit.  Hopefully all go according to plan and I can get the game released in Nov 2022. 

Gila Bola is what Haireey is designing and developing now. It is a game about the Malaysian football league, and this is his work-in-progress box art. He asked whether anyone wanted to be a cameo, and I jumped at the opportunity. For my jersey, naturally I picked the Sabah team, because I'm Sabahan. Getting myself onto the cover of a boardgame is more exciting than appearing in a newspaper! 

This is me - cartoon version

This is the live-action version

more plays of Exit: The Game

By now I have played 9 games in the Exit: The Game series. I like them well enough, but I'm not a particularly big fan (I know, after 9 games, that doesn't sound convincing). Exit is a good family activity. I played all nine with my wife and children. These three - The Mysterious Museum, The Sinister Mansion and Dead Man on the Orient Express - were bought in Sep 2019. They were unplayed for a rather long time. I only played them in May 2020, all three of them. The COVID-19 Movement Control Order in Malaysia started mid March. I had plenty of opportunities since then to play the games, since everybody was stuck home almost all the time. Maybe the games were out of sight and thus out of mind, so it was only in May that we brought them out to play.

The Mysterious Museum is of difficulty level 2 (of 5). The difficulty levels of the three games in this batch are 2, 3 and 4, so naturally I started with 2 and progressed from there. I wanted to build up to a climax. Level 2 was indeed easy, especially since we had played 6 other Exit games before. We already had a grasp of the styles of the puzzles and the typical tricks. We managed to complete The Mysterious Mansion within 1 hour without much difficulty.

The background stories in the Exit series are somewhat linked. They are written in such a way that they assume you have played previous games in the series (which is true for me). So you have experienced many dangerous situations from which you needed to escape. You keep getting yourself into such situations. The story writer pokes fun at that - why do you keep getting yourself into trouble? For people who have indeed played previous games, the references to those previous games are relatable and humourous. For people playing a game in the series for the first time, no harm done.

When I play I prefer to use the timer in the official app, because of the background sound effects. It's quite atmospheric. Younger daughter Chen Rui finds the background sound effects scary and asks me to lower the volume.

The Sinister Mansion (Level 3) took us more than an hour. I had thought with our experience we would complete it within an hours, since Level 3 is medium difficulty.

Dead Man on the Orient Express (Level 4) was of course inspired by Agatha Christie's detective novel Murder on the Orient Express. This Exit game has something a little different from others in the series. There really is a crime you have to solve based on clues you collect throughout the game, e.g. accounts given by the suspects, objects you collect, details you observe. In usual Exit games you are basically solving ten puzzles. There are logic puzzles, word puzzles, puzzles based on patterns and shapes, and mathematical puzzles. In Dead Man on the Orient Express, you get these puzzles too, but they all build up to an overarching crime you need to solve. When you solve certain puzzles, you gain access to the cabins of specific passengers, in which you will find more clues to help you solve the crime. This is a nice thematic touch.

If you have read the original story, don't fret. It wouldn't spoil this game for you. You get a very similar setting, but the story and the details are different.

If you are a casual Exit games player and do not intend to play every single one, then I recommend this, because it's something a little different, and it's challenging enough. I think as a general rule, if you have played games in the series and already have some familiarity, don't go for games at Level 1 or 2. They would be too easy for experienced players.

Dead Man on the Orient Express despite being a Level 4 game did not feel as hard as I expected. It was about the same difficulty as The Sinister Mansion (Level 3). It still took us about an hour and a half to complete, and we did need to use hints.

Daughters Shee Yun and Chen Rui now play the Exit games with Michelle and I as equals. It is no longer two adults leading two children. In fact sometimes they take the lead, and we are happy to let them do so. Often they are the ones who come up with the solutions.

Detective: City of Angels

Plays: 4Px1.

The Game

The setting is Los Angeles of the 1940's. You are detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department. This is an age when police detectives are pretty much like licensed gangsters. You get to extort money from the real gangsters. Every scenario you play is one case. You need to solve the case within a time limit, after which the trail goes cold and the case is never solved. It is a race among the detectives to solve the case. During the course of the game, you only get one chance to solve the case. If you fail, you still continue to play, but you will need to wait until time runs out before you get another chance to solve the case. If no one solves the mystery when time runs out, everyone gets a second chance to solve the case. If everyone fails his second attempt, then the mastermind player wins the game. The mastermind player is the dungeon master. He sets up the game and knows the solution. He determines how the non-player characters (NPC's) behave when being questioned or body searched by the detective players. His objective is to prevent the detective players from solving the case.

Of course the hat is too big, it's not meant to be used this way. Hats are generic player markers. You use them to indicate who has seen which pieces of evidence, who has leverage on whom, etc.

The game board is a map of Los Angeles, divided into five regions. Moving between any two locations within the same region takes one action. Moving to an adjacent region usually takes two actions, the first one to move to a location at the border between the two regions, and the second one to get to your final destination.

The crime scene is marked with a red circle. In this photo it's the pier at location #99. During setup, the identities and locations of some of the key persons are already known, and the characters are placed at their locations. The row of cards at the top are the case cards. They can be persons (suspects / witnesses), murder weapons, or simply pieces of information. Some of these are already revealed during setup, some are face-down and need to be uncovered by the detectives during play.

These are the case cards of the first scenario. The first one is the murder victim, the next three are suspects, the rest are unknown.

You need to read a story before you start playing a scenario. This page tells you how to do setup and also specifies whether there are any special rules for the scenario.

Game components for the green player.

On your turn you get four actions. These four cubes help you remember how many you have taken, and what you have done. In addition to moving about, you get to question the key persons, body search them, and search locations. All these may yield new information. One important twist is what the key persons tell you may not be true. They may be outright lies. This can really throw you off. When you question a key person, other players may decide to employ snitches to eavesdrop. If they do, they will learn what you learn. The mastermind can sometimes prevent this, but you have no way of preventing it, other than doing questioning when everyone else is too poor to employ snitches. This snitch mechanism is important, because it makes investigation much more effective. It is nigh impossible to investigate everything yourself. You don't have enough turns or enough actions. You need to make use of snitches to gain information on other players' turns.

One of the things you can do is to visit businesses owned by gangsters, and extort money from them. This is likely something you'll often do. In fact it is so lucrative that you are limited to doing it only once per turn. You can't just camp at a nightclub and take all their hard earned money. You need money for many actions, like paying snitches. You can spend money on hooligans to rough up the people you are questioning. If they are trying to lie to you, this would force them to tell the truth. You'll also end up having leverage over them, because they are caught lying. On the other hand, if you rough them up when they are already telling you the truth, the mastermind gains leverage over you instead. So you do need to think twice before employing hooligans. Leverage is just a currency you can spend, e.g. to force someone to tell the truth during one particular session of questioning. The mastermind can use leverage to prevent a player from hiring a snitch.

Everyone gets one such record sheet. You use this to record information you have gained, and also your theories and deductions. Each row corresponds to a suspect whom you may question. Each column corresponds to a case card, which can be a person, a weapon or a piece of information. You can ask any suspect about any of the case cards, and this grid is for you to record who said what about which case card. Of course you can also use your own convention of taking notes.

The two sections at the bottom are for you to try to solve the case. To solve a case you need to write down the murderer, the weapon, and the motive. The solution usually includes a few motives, and you just need to get one right. If you correctly guess the murderer, the weapon and the motive, you win immediately. If you fail, the mastermind will tell you how many you get right. After that you continue to play, until someone else wins or time runs out. If time runs out, every detective gets a second chance to solve the case.

This section of the rulebook lists all the possible motives.

The setting is Los Angeles of the 1940's. Slang is used, and there is a glossary section to help you if you are not familiar with 1940's L.A.-speak. I would never have guessed cabbage means money.

Blue locations are police stations. You can visit police stations to get information about case cards already known by other detectives. Orange locations are gangsters' business. That's where you collect extortion money.

When you meet an NPC, you may question him and body search him. When you meet another detective, you may obtain information he knows. Sometimes detectives try to avoid one another because they don't want to share information.

Sometimes detectives claim evidence found and carry them with their persons. In such cases the detective's hat marker is placed here so that everyone knows who is carrying which piece of evidence. If a detective already knows about a particular piece of evidence, his marker is placed below the position of that piece of evidence.

This is the countdown track. You have a limited number of days to try to solve the case. One day is one round of play.

The Play

Essentially the game is a race to solve the case. There is tension between wanting to be fast, and wanting to collect enough information so that you can be more sure of your guess. If you are fast, but wrong, then you will be praying that the others get it wrong too. Your next opportunity is when time runs out and nobody has solved the case yet.

The game is all about collecting information, and piecing them together to form a story. Some information you collect is not very useful. Some is downright misleading. What stands out to me in this game is how some of the information may be lies. You need to immerse yourself in your role and in that world, so that you can judge who to trust and what to believe. On the whole it is better that the detectives investigate different people and locations. Collectively they would gather more information, and it would be easier to solve the case. However you are competitors and you don't really want to share information. Everyone wants to be the one questioning the right suspect and finding the right weapon. No one wants to go take the unlikely path for the sake of diversity or the common good. Strictly speaking there is no such thing as common good. This is not a cooperative game.

You need to have some imagination and creativity. You collect bits and pieces of information, and you try to assemble a likely story out of them. You put yourself in the shoes of that detective facing down the mafia boss, and you need to judge whether the guy is hiding something from you. You glean clues from the reactions of the NPC's. The actions of your fellow players will also give you hints. You need to watch what they are doing, even what they are not doing.

There is a limited number of possible murderers and murder weapons, so you can make use of the process of elimination to figure out the likely culprit and weapon. This is a little gamey. In real life, things would not be so simple. Solving a murder is not a multiple choice question. I guess this gamey aspect is unavoidable. Without some limit being implemented, the game may not be playable at all. The motives are a bit trickier. There are many of them so it feels more real.

The victim in the first scenario is a pretty girl.

"If the police detective career path doesn't work out I'm going to be a hat seller."

When all three detectives converge around these two characters, it is either they are the most likely suspects, or the detectives are trying to gain information from one another.

The red circle marks the crime scene.

The Thoughts

The most important twist in Detective: City of Angels is information you collect may turn out to be lies. You are not just weaving together scattered pieces of information, you also need to assess which pieces are true and which are false. There is good immersion because you need to put yourself into that situation at that time to be able to make judgements, and to imagine what might have actually happened.

Playing the mastermind is probably less fun. His role is to become part of the story and the experience for the detective players. In both games that we played, Ivan was the mastermind, so it was mostly him entertaining us. However he did play the first two scenarios himself beforehand using solo rules. When playing solo, you get to play detective, and the mastermind is a special rule set which governs how the NPC's behave.