Armed with my pastel mini whiteboard, iPad and PJs, I delved into this cooperative crime game this week! In Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, you play investigators who, piece by piece, try to solve one of five crimes, one clue at a time. You get to delve into suspect interviews, review evidence and more.
Unboxing Experience:
What’s more exciting than unboxing a new board game?! I gave my friend the privilege of doing so, a very generous way of showing my affection. Good deed done for the day, I then justified giving myself first dibs on everything else for the rest of the evening, like snack choices!
There are 2 booklets inside, adorned in siren blue and blood red: a casebook and a rulebook that fill the entire surface area of the box insert, making it difficult to misplace (essential as that would be an absolute disaster)! It provides the unbeatable satisfaction of pushing and popping out all of the tokens from the packaging (skill and stress tokens), which are cardboard, boosting environmental consideration. The board itself is crisp and clear, depicting 5 locations, 7 days, and a time track for working hours that players will move through as crime detectives. The board is nice and compact too, making setup easy, regardless of the amount of space you might have at that time. Looking through the rulebook, after the set up instructions, it very helpfully sets out ‘Three Basic Rules’: clues, time and locations, keeping the amount of time spent in the confused discomfort of “I have no idea what I need to do” to a minimum.
Gameplay Highlights:
The escapism factor in this game is huge! Players open up a forensic database on their phones or tablets, packed with information about suspects, weapons/stolen items and more. I was blown away by the format and aesthetic of the database, it truly made it feel like the real thing: that we were really detectives, cracking a crime case! Players move through the case cards, each progressing them further along the time track and some using up dreaded stress tokens (if you exceed a set limit of stress tokens, the game ends- if only life was like this and when the stress bucket fills too high you simply get to tap straight out for the day)! Some of the cards provide reference numbers that, when entered into the online database, bring up evidence like fingerprints (some useful, some fragmented and useless), and artefacts like a decrepit letter written on a very old typewriter.
What gives the game more realistic qualities is the level of detail packed into the prose, from little details like the weather and traffic conditions on the journeys between each location,to the features of the friendly colleague manning the evidence storeroom, to the sludgy coffee on offer to the team of investigators!
There is a fair level of complexity and the game is marketed for ages 16 and up. This makes it a game that requires a deep focus,helping players to switch off from any anxieties, dilemmas or crises they might have in the outside world. It’s so easy to get super invested in solving the case, an immersive experiences to sink your teeth into.
It can play solo, and this is a key factor I look for when purchasing a board game. A restorative, low commitment way to play a game at your own pace, that you can dip in and out of in your own time, adding the extra challenge of only having one brain power to solve it!
Other Comments
It was nice to be able to choose which investigators we played, however it seemed a bit mean that there were more male then female investigators to choose from: 2 female and 3 male. My friend chose the first female- presenting investigator, and I wanted to choose the remaining one, but at first glance she had no ‘skill’ listed on her card, so I was put off from choosing her and had to default to playing a male one, boo!
Some of the cases have cheesy titles, like “The Soldier With a Heart of Gold”, this was ok though, as it balanced out and broke up the requirement in the game to channel quiet, sensible focus.
For us, it initially seemed easy to accidentally uncover some case cards in the wrong order (however, our brains were kind of spinning with information from the expansive web of clues, so revisiting some clues helped to piece things together and work out what the priorities were).
Final Verdict
This isn’t the type of game you can fit into a lunchbreak, or a sleepy winddown before bed after the busiest day at work. So just make sure you’ve got some bubble tea or iced coffee, snacks (a favourite amongst my ‘board game friends’ is milk chocolate covered pretzels) and a good 3 hours (probably 3 and a half if none of you have played before). If you’re someone who likes to utilise a murder drama on TV to enter a different world for an evening, you’ll love this game, and you’ll get really excited when you first login to the criminal database! Give it a try!
