I never really played any murder mystery games but enjoy watching documentaries about such topics. What are your recommendations?
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We like Mysterium a lot, it is very similar to Dixit if you’ve played it. I could never get into ultimate werewolf though, the one night thing always made it just feel like chance to me.
If you like Mysterium, I highly recommend the successor game Obscurio. Its pretty much the same gimmick of art interpretation, but works way better for groups.
Instead of the “ghost” having to keep track of and pick art for each person, the “investigators” are making a group decision so you only need to pick one set of clue art. This means the ghost’s turn is way faster (doesn’t explode with higher player count) and there’s actually group interaction instead of each person in their own world, staring at art no one else cares about.
The way it’s set up also means the ghost can start working on choosing the art for the next round while the group is debating, not having to wait to see if they are correct or not, so it’s way more streamlined. All together just a snappier, more engaging version of Mysterium.
That sounds great, I’ll check it out!
Oh interesting! Dixit I have played but its not a very complicated game. Does mysterium add some more complexity?
Yeah, a bit, it’s still a somewhat basic but I enjoy this more. One player is a ghost and the other players are working semicollaboratively to identify the room, suspect and murder weapon with in the first instance each player having to identify a set of the three. The ghost has the three pre allocated for each player so then it’s giving out hint cards for the players to identify the correct thing, which is itself a card. The ghost can’t talk so can only communicate through the hint cards. Once all three have been identified for each player there is then a voting to try to identify the right set based on more hint cards with players seeing only a limited selection depending how well they did on the first phase.
I hope this makes sense, I can explain more if it’s helpful!
Super helpful! Thanks a lot! I guess its most fun with many people :)
Yeah there is a way to play it two player but I think five is ideal
MicroMacro: Crime City is excellent. Can’t recommend it enough.
I found Deception: Murder in Hong Kong to be really disappointing. At the time it had stellar reviews but I found it really frustrating. I don’t know who had the idea to use the tiniest possible cards on a game that is best with 6-8 people. It’s a game for ants.
Cool, thanks for the suggestion! How replayable is MicroMacro after solving the 16 cases?
You don’t destroy or mark anything so you can replay or borrow it at any time. However, once you know the solution to the puzzle it’s pretty much ruined. My shitty memory forgets the solution so I replay the missions once in a while when introducing the game to a new person.
@pathief how long does it take to complete a game? If you get about 16 cases, are you ripping through 2 or 3 in a single sitting or is each more of a distinct event when you play?
It depends on the difficulty. Each case consists on a couple of cards that point you to right direction. The first cases are very easy with very few cards, you’ll complete them in 10-15 minutes. Super fast. Then the missions become harder and with more cards, you have to go way back to find the offender. I’d say 30-40 minutes for the longer ones.
The game also has a hard variant where you just read the introduction of the mission and deduce everything else by yourself. I really like this variant and it obviously increases the duration of each mission. The game isn’t hard but if feels really great to deduce everything correctly!
My one criticism is that the game shines with 2 players at most, maybe 3.
Clue? I’d argue it’s been replaced by derivatives such as “13 Clues” (mix between Clue(do) and “Guess who?”) and “Awkward Guests” (Clue with a lot more options and less luck).
I’ve played 3 of the Cryptic Killers games, and enjoyed all of them so far. I did one as a family group, and 2 with just two of us. Takes around 3 hours if going through them slowly and carefully enough to get all the details.
