Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game
120m - 180m
1 - 5 Players
Ages 16+
Meeple on Board Rating
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In Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game you are going to solve FIVE different cases and find out what connects them, you are going to BREAK THE 4th WALL by using every resource you can, you are going to browse the game’s DEDICATED DATABASE simulating your agency’s resources, you will enter a city maze of old mysteries and fresh CRIME, and you will be able to COOPERATE with other agents or solve the mystery on your own.
Take the job of a real detective in a modern setting! In Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, 1-5 players take on the role of investigators, solving mysterious crimes while working as an Antares National Investigation Agency team members. This board game tell rich stories – stories you will participate in. Let’s hope that you will be able to deduce the end, before there is another crime… The game will challenge you with five different cases, that have to be played in order. Seemingly unconnected at first, they will unveil an immersive meta-plot based on facts and fiction alike.
Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game brings classic, card-based, puzzle-solving gameplay into the 21st century with the introduction of online elements. You will gain access to the online Antares database that contains data about suspects, witnesses, and documentation from arrests and trials related to your case. Use every tool at your disposal to solve these crimes – consult the Internet, check the facts and constantly discover new clues. You are not playing a detective; you ARE a detective!
Ages | 16+ |
---|---|
Players | Solo, 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players, 5 Players |
Play Time | 120m – 180m |
Designer | Jakub Łapot, Przemysław Rymer, Ignacy Trzewiczek |
Mechanics | Cooperative Play, Storytelling |
Theme | Deduction, Murder/Mystery |
Publisher | GaGa Games, Pendragon Game Studio, REXhry, IELLO, Maldito Games, Pegasus Spiele, Portal Games |
Andy Parsons
I've had my doubts about boardgames with apps in the past. Here they are again. With Detective I felt as though the game would have worked a little better if it were entirely run by the app. The only purpose of the board, with its five locations, calendar and clock, is bookkeeping. The lead cards could have been more pages in the database, with any leads as yet unpursued helpfully listed in one place. Keeping track of available skills, and the team's authority and stress levels is what a computer is made for. Having said all that, Detective's combination of physical components and its app is eminently playable. Perhaps I should stop moaning. I have also had my doubts about deduction games that point the player in the direction(s) they should go next. At times, playing Detective felt as though the game was leading me along a predetermined path to a solution, with my role reduced to managing time and investigative resources. Cases one and three, in which you start with little idea of what's going on, offer the strongest flavour of active deduction. I did appreciate how Detective strung together five separate cases with a single plot thread. Also the ambition of cases three and five in shaking up the formula. However, case three has the "let me taunt the feds with so many clues that they will eventually thwart my dastardly plan" kind of plot that only exists in the pages of superhero comics. While case five's final denouement abandons an intriguing theme that has run through previous cases and opts for a solution that strains credibility. Which is a great shame, because I enjoyed much of the journey to it. That enjoyment was despite the reams of tedious scene setting on the lead cards that many commenters have bemoaned. To some extent, I managed to tune it out, but in a game with a great deal of reading, it does irritate. Production quality is decent and the artwork is functional. The rules and casebook are fine.
ArCher_13
My favourite detective board game. The story that covers several different time periods is outstanding and online database provides you with some additional features that make your experience more immersive.
Arkeas
Well, it's from Portal so the rules are a complete mess as usual. The web app used to drive this is fairly interesting though it takes a little bit of poking around to really understand what's going on. The game works well but I found myself getting lost in the convoluted mess of the first few cases and generally stopped caring about what was happening. It's a neat experiment and the crime database was fun to play with but the tangled mess of threads in the story has me completely disinterested in continuing to play through it.