Meeple on Board Rating
Be the first to review this product.Board Game Geek Reviews
Be the first to review “Detective: City of Angels (Kickstarter – Wise Head Pledge)”
You must be logged in to post a review.
You must be logged in to post a review.
Detective: City of Angels, set in the dark and violent world of 1940s Los Angeles, is a game of mystery, deception, and investigation for 1–5 players. Most players will step into the shoes of LAPD homicide detectives, hungry for glory and willing to do whatever it takes to successfully close a case, even if that means intimidating suspects, concealing evidence, and hiring snitches to rat on their fellow detectives. One player, however, will take on the role of The Chisel, whose only goal is to stall and misdirect the detectives at every turn using bluffing, manipulation, and (often) outright lies.
Detective: CoA uses the innovative ARC (Adaptive Response Card) System to create the feel of interrogating a suspect. Suspects do not simply give paragraph-book responses; instead The Chisel carefully chooses how they will answer. When Billy O’Shea insists that the victim was a regular at Topsy’s Nightclub, is he telling the truth or is The Chisel subtly leading the detectives toward a dead end that will cost them precious time? Detectives can challenge responses that they think are lies but at great risk: If they’re wrong, The Chisel will acquire leverage over them, making the case that much harder to solve.
Detective: CoA includes separate, detailed casebooks for both the detectives and The Chisel. Each crime is a carefully constructed puzzle that can unfold in a variety of ways depending on how the detectives choose to pursue their investigations. As the detectives turn the city upside down, uncovering fresh evidence and "hot" leads, hidden suspects may be revealed and new lines of questioning will open up, creating a rich, story-driven experience.
Inspired by classic film noir like The Big Sleep, the works of James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential), and the video game L.A. Noire from Rockstar Games, Detective: City of Angels is a murder-mystery game unlike any other. Will one detective rise above the rest and close the case on L.A.’s latest high profile murder? Or will The Chisel sow enough doubt and confusion to prevent the detectives from solving the crime?
—description from the publisher
A "sleuth" mode allows 1 or more players to play fully cooperatively, solving the cases together.
Ages | 14+ |
---|---|
Players | Solo, 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players, 5 Players |
Play Time | 30m – 150m |
Designer | Evan Derrick |
Mechanics | Action Points, Cooperative Game, Team-Based Game, Area Movement |
Theme | Murder/Mystery |
Publisher | La Boîte de Jeu, Van Ryder Games, Game Harbor, Pegasus Spiele |
Andy Parsons
Detective: City of Angels is very evocative of the hardboiled detective stories of Chandler and Hammett. However, it does have some oddities. The player characters are all LAPD detectives investigating the same case. Yet, unless you are playing the coop variant, they don't work as a team. Indeed, they keep clues to themselves, pay snitches to spy on their colleagues, and remain tight-lipped about why they have gone to a particular location, because this is a race to solve the case first. The second oddity - at least in the introductory and first proper cases - is the complete absence of forensics. What's novel in my experience of the deduction genre is the addition of a sort of game master - the Chisel. Like a good GM, the Chisel manages the flow of information, sometimes providing helpful answers to questions and sometimes not. Players can challenge an answer but at the risk of giving the Chisel leverage. This can in turn be used to block lines of inquiry. The Chisel is an effective device for introducing doubt into players' minds about who is lying or has not revealed everything they know. My impression so far is that the cases are quite tightly focused on a few locations, suspects, and witnesses. Compared to Consulting Detective's labyrinthine mysteries, the two City of Angels cases I have played were pretty straightforward. The greatest barrier to solving them was the clues withheld by competing detectives. There was a significant first-player advantage. In both cases the crime scene yielded clues to the first player. The only way for others find out what they were was to visit a police station and pay a bribe, or wait until a much later game turn. With three detectives there was quite a bit of downtime as players took four-action turns, challenged the Chisel, scribbled notes, and thought about fresh information. The artwork and production quality are both good.
Bfan
This is the crime board game of all crime board games. It is so dense, the ideas, the cases, everything is just realy good. This is the thing the boardgame world always needed. Could play it all day
carnodingo
Type: Déduction Catégorie: médium Thème: LA Noire Mécaniques: 1vs all, soloable, coop ou pas, deduction, bribing, course vers la vérité Similaire dans ma collection: Sherlock Holme Conseil Detective Taille de la boîte: Rectangle grand