To Catch a Cryptid
The city is quiet, there is an uneasy feeling in the air, and in the mist and fog pervading the dark narrow streets hides an elusive creature believed to simply be myth or legend. This creature is a Cryptid, and one plucky scientist wants to root it out and prove to the world it exists. That is the setting you find yourself in for this two player, head to head game Cryptid: Urban Legends. Designed by Hal Duncan and Ruth Veevers and published by Osprey Games in 2022, Cryptid: Urban Legends is a follow up to the critically acclaimed and commercial success that was Cryptid, a competitive puzzler for 3-5 players. Instead Cryptid: Urban Legends takes the deducting down to just two players, one playing as the aforementioned scientist looking to track the creature down, and the other as the Cryptid itself, looking to escape the city unnoticed.
But following on from such a highly thought of game is never easy, so how does it play, what did I make of it, and how easy is it making a straight deduction game for just two people.
This isn’t a sequel
The first point to make regarding Cryptid: Urban Legends, is it’s nothing like the original game, a criticism that is often levied at it, perhaps rather unfairly. If you’re buying this game expecting just more Cryptid then you will be disappointed, the mechanics are different and the theme is essentially changed. And then is nothing wrong with that. If you’re making a new game, you shouldn’t just do what you originally did, there is something more fun and interesting in creating an entirely new experience for players, so that if you have or haven’t played the original game, it doesn’t matter, you can still appreciate this new game.
That is where I find myself. I have never played the original, I know bits about it from research and heard Urban Legends is nothing like it, so I felt well placed to give this review a perspective from someone who isn’t influenced or perhaps tainted from experiencing the original game that people are so fond of. My review of Cryptid: Urban Legends will be based purely on the game itself, and how it plays, not just comparing it to an essentially different game.
Why’d you have to go and make things so complicated?
I doubt most other people would throw an Avril Lavigne reference into their review of a game about Cryptid’s, but I do feel its fitting here, as my first impressions of the game were simply, I don’t think I understand it. In Cryptid: Urban Legends, you can play as the Cryptid, whose goal it is to get presence markers on tiles that get added to the table. They do this by moving sensors from the active row, e.g. the one where sensors are at the start of the turn, to the inactive row, where you will have more city blocks or tiles. The sensors come in three different colours, and once all the sensors have moved from one row to the other, the Cryptid calls out either a colour combination or number, and if the block next to those sensors has that specific combination, and there is a presence token already diagonally next to that city block, they spread their presence.
The scientist is simply trying to stop that from happening, removing presence as part of one of their turns. If the Cryptid is ever down after the first turn to 1 or 0 presence markers, the scientist wins. Both characters can also can win by collecting evidence counters through the course of the game in different ways.
Reading through the rules was quite a challenge, with some rather unclear and unhelpful examples of gameplay which didn’t help mine or my partners understanding of what exactly it was we were doing or trying to achieve, making the initial games of it overly complicated.
It immediately broke one of my most trusted rules on games, that board games can be learnt through playing. Instead my first few games where I played as the Cryptid I lost within the first round, due to a total misunderstanding of one of the games core rules. Yes you could blame me and the fact I am not overly intelligent, but the rules just weren’t clear and the examples muddled, so that it wasn’t until we watched a YouTube video of someone else actually playing the game, that we fully understood where we had been going wrong.
It is not helped by the fact that what you’re trying to do and achieve bears little to no resemblance to the theme of the game, a major problem that unfortunately it struggles to overcome.
More Abstract, Less Deduction
The game calls itself a deduction game, but realistically this isn’t present in the game at all. The scientist isn’t really using deduction to work out where the Cryptid is, they’re simply doing the same actions as the Cryptid to try and stop their opponent moving the sensors where they want them.
This is where the lack of theme becomes a major issue. There is nothing here that makes you feel like a sneaky Cryptid or a clever scientist. It is much more of an abstract puzzle game, akin to games like Shobu or Onitama, and actually this puzzle after a few games to actually understand the rules can be fun to master.
If you just see this as an abstract game, then working out what you’re opponent is trying to do which ever character you are can be fun and intriguing. It feels like the developers had an idea for a game, and just decided as Cryptid was popular to stick this theme onto it, which is a shame as I think it actively works against the mechanism of the game.
Describing itself as a deduction game can be misleading for people getting it, as I would never describe this game as such. If you’re looking for a two player deduction game, then Fugitive is one that does manage to expertly craft this mechanic into a short and sweet two player experience, where you’re playing two separate characters with one trying to catch the other, something I was hoping Cryptid: Urban Legends would manage as well.
The Art Style
Where Cryptid: Urban Legends does shine is in the wonderful, almost graphic novel type art style on the cards. The wonderful imagery of the Cryptid sneaking round city streets and climbing buildings is evocative, as is the mad scientist styling of that characters cards. It’s just a shame they are not more varied.
The cards are used for the different moves each character can make, align, split and shuffle. All the align cards for each character are the same, as are the split, as are the shuffle, which means the wonderful art is mostly just repeated throughout, which I think was a missed opportunity to add a bit more colour to it. This is particularly evident in the city block tiles which are all fairly bland, opposed to the rest of the art in the game.
I also really enjoyed the feel and density of the sensor cubes, presence markers and evidence counters, so that each time you got to place one it gave you that strange board game feeling of getting to move around nice pieces.
Even the box it came was really evocative with lovely reds and blacks that shone and made it an enticing play.
It was these features that made me really want to get more out of this game, as there was clearly a lot of love that went into making this, and I do really think hidden amongst this game isn’t just a Cryptid, but a fun, puzzling experience.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, while my review might feel like I didn’t enjoy Cryptid: Urban Legends, I do believe there is a strong game to be had here, something that will definitely be right up someone’s street, but I do think its categorised mostly by a missed opportunity. It’s criticism shouldn’t be focused on it not being more like its bigger cousin Cryptid, but the fact it used that moniker at all, as I think it became a crutch to the game, rather than a selling point.
My feeling is it would have been better either as a pure abstract game, scrapping the Cryptid theming and instead producing something that was a purely head to head game against your opponent using sensors and markers to ‘catch’ your opponent, with no theme needed.
Or it could have leant more into the original game, make the two characters asymmetrical, have them do different actions, have the city blocks not all be the same, make the puzzle of finding the Cryptid or evading the scientist more unique to make the two characters feel more opposed and different to one another.
It might be a lesson that not every game needs a two player variant. I do think if you like puzzle games and enjoy stuff like Chess or Shobu, then I can easily recommend Cryptid: Urban Legends, as by my last few games I found myself really enjoying it. But if you’re in the market for a two player deduction game or you really liked Cryptid and want more of it, then I think you might want to find your Cryptid’s elsewhere and keep looking.
