One bit of good news about the game Rear Window is that you don’t have to have seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie first. Not that it’s a bad movie or anything like that—dated, as you might expect, given that it was released in 1954, but a fun watch if you have the time. (Unlike the 1998 remake, but let’s not go there.)
Pretty much all that the movie provides is the general idea of trying to understand what people are doing limited by what you can see through their apartment windows, as well as a pleasant 1950s aesthetic that pervades the game. The artwork reflects the movie style, and you might recognise some of the characters from the film—Alfred Hitchcock even appears on one card in a little cameo moment—but none of that has any effect on gameplay.
Rear Window is a broadly cooperative game for 3–5 players (though it can work with 2 at a push, and it’s possible to squeeze another in if you really need to go beyond 5).
One player acts as the Detective, and silently doles out clues to the others, the Watchers, in the form of picture cards showing what’s happening in 4 separate apartments. The Watchers together have to guess which people out of 8 possibilities live in which apartment and associate them each with 1 of 13 selected attributes, one of which might be—dun, dun, dun—murder.
Playing the Game
Initially, the Watchers choose 12 of the total set of 20 attributes and pass 1 token of each to the Detective along with a murder token—a suggestion for the first game or two is to omit the murder token for a more straightforward experience.
The Detective randomly chooses 4 tokens and places them on the solution board (hidden behind a screen so the Watchers can’t see) to indicate which attribute matches each apartment. 4 resident tokens are similarly placed. The remaining tokens are placed out of view so that Watchers can’t accidentally see them.
The game plays out over 4 days, each starting with the Director drawing 8 window cards. The Director’s task is to use these somewhat ambiguous pictures to guide the Watchers to identifying the resident and attribute by placing 2 on each apartment on that day’s board. It’s possible to use a Cut token to discard a number of window cards if they prove to be of limited value and draw fresh ones (hoping for them to be better!), but this can be done at most once a day and only 3 times during the whole game.
The Watchers then spend time discussing what the cards mean, and the Director should be paying attention to what they say to gain clues about where to focus their attention on the following day. (It’s also suggested that in a 2-player game, the Watcher should think out loud to provide this valuable feedback). They place resident and attribute tokens on the day board to indicate their choices for that round.
The Director compares what they’ve guessed with the solution and awards a point for every correct match, placing a cube on the grid in the centre of the day board. The Director is not allowed to speak at all during the game, and this is the only direct, if somewhat limited, feedback they can provide.
This sequence is repeated for the next up to 3 days, with the Director trying to guide the Watchers away from mistakes and cementing the choices they got right on earlier days.
For the case where there is no murder, if the Watchers score 8 correct guesses (4 residents and 4 attributes), everyone wins; if the fourth day ends without achieving that, everyone loses.
When the murder tokens are included at the start of the game, note that only the Director knows if there has actually been a murder (and where it occurred). If there is a murder, the game becomes less cooperative. The Director wins if the Watchers make 6 or 7 correct guesses before the end of day 4, but don’t correctly place the murder token (which can only be played on day 4, not before). Watchers win if they make 7 or 8 correct guesses, including the murder token’s placement. This means the Director has to give sufficient guidance for the Watchers to guess enough correctly, but prevaricate regarding the murder, and Watchers have to work out how much they can trust the Director’s cards. With fewer than 6 correct guesses, everyone loses.
OK, I lied a little earlier when I said the game had very little relationship to the movie. For most of the film, there’s a distinct ambiguity about whether or not a murder has been committed, similar to what the Watchers have to deal with here.
There are a couple of additional game features. First, as well as the standard attribute tokens, there are several relationship ones—rather than identifying a resident as, say, the photographer, these indicate a connection between the resident and another character, e.g., looking for romance with X; getting those correct means identifying the attribute and the second resident, so this is something for a more advanced game. Second, there are 4 watcher placards, featuring a character from the movie and capitalising on that character’s skill. These allow the Watchers to ‘ask’ the Director a question to find out more, e.g., the Lisa Freemont card can be used to make the director place an arrow token on the most salient feature of a specific window card (which could be the person in the picture, if that identifies the resident, or some object, which might help identify the attribute)—though it’s possible the Director might lie! The cards can each be used only once during the game.
Comparisons
The most obvious comparison for anyone who’s played it has got to be Mysterium: similar silent clue-giving via pictures, similar guessing of people and attributes (specifically, place and weapon in Mysterium). Mysterium is a significantly larger and harder game, with more things to guess, and the pictures are way more abstract—frustratingly so at times, perhaps leading to overlong games. Conversely, people comfortable with Mysterium might quickly become bored with the relative simplicity of Rear Window.
The one feature Mysterium doesn’t have is the competitive element when there is a murder, along with Watchers having to deal with a potentially unreliable Director.
It feels partly like Mastermind too—you guess a number of values (albeit, only 4 compared to Rear Window’s 8) and get told how many are correct. Rear Window’s clues compensate somewhat for the 2 levels of scoring Mastermind uses.
Verdict
Rear Window is an enjoyable game, easy to get to grips with and should appeal to anyone who likes logical deduction games. The components are sturdy, and the theme fits the game nicely. However, after a few plays, you might find that the limited number of window cards leads to everything feeling a bit samey, and you may want to progress to Mysterium for additional head scratching. Conversely, if you like the idea of Mysterium but find it too daunting, Rear Window is a more accessible alternative.
Ratings
Overall score of 80/100.
Artwork: 4/5
Complexity: 3/5
Replayability: 3/5
Player interaction: 4/5
Component quality: 4/5
Likes
Easy to comprehend
Good graduation of complexity by choosing if murder and relationships are included
Nice tension with an unreliable Director
Nostalgic appeal for those of a certain age
Dislikes
No nostalgic appeal for everyone else!
With the limited number of cards and their concrete picture style, repeated plays can lose their appeal.
About the author
When not playing board games or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
