played for you

Mystery

Motive for Murder

A criminal case focusing on the questions of Who? and Why? There are five game stages in the game which unlock the rules in stages, beginning with game #1:

At the start of the case a random suspect tile is laid out as victim. You hold three suspect tiles and interview cubes of a color, a status disc for each player is placed next to the scoring track. You play a tile from hand, adjacent to one already laid out, and at a maximum distance of two positions from the corps, place an interview cube on it and draw a tile. When all twelve possible spots are filled with suspects, you score interview markers for victory points; arrows with point values on the tiles – blue for positive and red for negative – mark relations between suspects and suspects and victim. Those relations determine the degree of suspicion for a suspect and thus your points. Then a new case is played and after as many cases as there are players you win with most points.

In game #2 there are two corpses, in game #3 you can also play motive cards; game #4 is the complete game with three rounds for cards and suspect tiles, victory is achieved with interviewing the most probable suspect and there are only limited scorings of suspects. In the advanced game #5 detectives and second interviews are added. There is also a solitaire version of the game.

This is a very different detection game with cleverly constructed relations between cards, there are never improbably relations, but for your score you depend almost totally on the tiles you draw and the turn order. Not for thinkers, but an unusual and very well-made, light filler game.

Players: 1-5

Age: 10+

Time: 90+

Designer: Bruce Glassco

Artist: Edward Gorey

Price: ca. 60 Euro

Publisher: Mayfair Games 2015

Web: www.mayfairgames.com

Genre: Detection, tile placement

Users: With friends

Special: 1 player

Version: en

Rules: en

In-game text: ja

Comments:

Topic somewhat abstract

Relations cleverly constructed

Somewhat chance-driven

Compares to:

Tile placement games on relations between tiles

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0