Introduction
Micro Macro Crime City is a cooperative detective game for 1-4 players in which you find evidence, follow leads, and solve criminal cases.
Game Setup
Before even opening the box of Micro Macro Crime City, there is an optional small case on the front of the box for you to solve. Once open, the setup for Micro Macro Crime City couldn’t be easier! First, decide how many people are playing. Then unfold the giant 75cm x 110cm map and make sure everyone can see it. The rule book also states twice that you should play Micro Macro Crime City in a well lit area, so you can view the map easily. Grab your magnifying glass and choose a case you want to solve from the 16 available. In each case, the first card you will read is white, and the rest of them are black.
Game Round
To play a round of Micro Macro Crime City, you will first have to assign one player to be the lead investigator, their job is to read the text on the case card aloud so everyone can hear it. Each case will ask you to find somewhere, someone or something. You must always find a scene on the city map, you can’t just guess. Once you find what the first card has asked and you all agree as a team that this is it, the lead investigator flips the card to see if it was correct. If it is, then they will read the text on the back of the card; however, if it isn’t, then the lead investigator flips the card back without reading what was on the back of it. They will tell the other players they are incorrect and need to investigate further. Now the lead investigator knows the correct answer they can no longer help the players find the clue. Once you solve the card it is moved to the discard pile and the lead investigator reads the next card in the draw pile, this is repeated until you have found all clues and solved the case.
Thoughts
Micro Macro Crime City is an amazing family game; it’s really easy to get to the table, setup time takes seconds, and the rules are simple enough that anyone can play. It’s a great social game with amazing artwork and one that I use frequently as a warm-up game to start an evening of playing board games, or if I want a quick, fun game to play that doesn’t require a lot of explanation. Micro Macro Crime City gives you enough cases that will keep you entertained for a long while, it even has some cases that aren’t on the cards provided, which you can try to find on the map and try to figure them out yourself! One thing to also note is that once you have solved all the cases, you might think that it’s over, and it is, in a way. But I feel that the map has so many stories and characters on it, that if you didn’t play it for a while and then came back to a case you had solved in the past, it would be difficult to remember where everything was and therefore I think that it does have replayability, even when you have solved all the cases. Furthermore, I would say that this is a game that I don’t think you would rush through to solve every case in one evening. The beauty of it is that it’s a slow burner that you get out every now and then to prolong its shelf life. There are a few things that you might consider before buying Micro Macro Crime City. Firstly, you need a large area to play the game; the map takes up a lot of space, so I hope you have a big table. Also, some of the themes are for a mature audience as they include things like murder or physical violence, so it may not be suitable for all children, but this is made aware in the game and tells you what cases to avoid.
