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My Other Half loves a good murder. If someone’s had a proper stabbing in a six-part crime drama, then you better believe that it’ll be on our telly pronto. Grab a cuppa, get under a throw, nab a cat to pop on your lap, and settle into the gruesomeness.
There’ll be loads of questions. ‘Does he look a bit odd?’ ‘Who’s she again?’ ‘What were they doing there at that time of day?’ (My answer is almost always ‘Dunno’, but that doesn’t seem to stop the questions.) The scene is worked from the comfort of the sofa, the mysteries are untangled, and the Other Half usually figures it out before the end. I don’t. I’m often still struggling to figure out which character is which.
Sometimes the whole thing is watched in one single bingey night, and one gets the pleasure of a night filled with murder dreams. After so much revision, then, you’d think I’d be well prepared to solve any kind of crime you threw at me, even one over a century old. Let’s find out if that’s the ‘case’, shall we?
Crime Scene London 1892 is my first detective-style game, so I approached it with some trepidation, believing I’d had no prior experience of this sort of thing. That turned out not to be the case, but we’ll get to that later. So… it’s murder, innit? And the name of the game gives away the fact that you’re in Victorian London and you are a detective armed with a briefcase and your own wits (that last point did a fine job of causing my stomach to sink). There’s been a savage slaying, so foul that hardened policemen are doubled over and spattering their shoes (apologies for the visual). It’s only been four years since the Ripper vanished into the swirling fog of the London streets, and before you lies a victim bearing all of the grisly hallmarks of that merciless killer…
And that’s as much as we’ll say about the story. You’ll find out the rest for yourself as you play. There’s an initial opening chapter in the storybook to read out loud (and I must insist that you read it out loud in the manner of Vincent Price, thank you very much), from where you are instructed to take the first of the evidence card and continue the story there. Many of the cards contain paragraphs of the story, and pay close attention as they are likely to hold clues to your progression.
A note about the age rating: it says 18+ on the box, but that strikes me as overly cautious. There is no violent or bloody art in any of the cards, and there’s only a couple of descriptions in the storybook that I would consider potentially unsuitable for under 14s. If you’re a bit squeamish, there’s little to worry about here.
In The Box
How does this gruesome murder game play, then?
The presentation of the game sets the Victorian scene nicely, even if there isn’t much to it. There’s a deck of cards, a well-drawn crime scene covered in a five by six numbered grid, and most effective of all for atmosphere you get a manila folder covered in a detective’s script which contains the various booklets you need to play the game.
First up, there’s an introductory sheet that lays out the basics of the game style, which is a useful heads-up for someone like me who’s totally new to the murder scene. Next is a four-page instruction booklet detailing the actual mechanics of the game… and it does an okay job of this. Okay-ish. The layout – particularly the central spread – is a tad all over the place. Key mechanics are dotted around instead of constructed in an easy to follow order, and possibly contributed to the confusion of my first ten or fifteen minutes. Then we have the storybook, which contains three chapters - an opening, a middle section that is triggered halfway through the game, and the conclusion, so only read the parts you’re told to and at the times you are directed to read them! The writing, both here and on the cards, is effective at rendering a mysterious atmosphere and does a good job of putting the player in the right mood to play.
Alongside these booklets there are four card decks in the box: the evidence cards, the crime files, the hints, and the reputation cards, and all of this have a vital role to play in your investigations.
The Investigation Begins
I will ‘fess up, I made a real hash of the first crime file. I couldn’t get my brain into gear, wasn’t sure what I was meant to be looking for, and quickly found myself using the first hint card and losing one reputation. Even then, I struggled to figure out what I was meant to do. I was back and forward to the rulebook a lot, hoping for some further indication of what my next move might be, or if I’d made any right move at all. I worried that the entire game would be like this. Once we got past the opening confusion, however, the game began to flow. There’s a distinct sequence here, and you’ll quickly get used to it. Generally speaking, there will be a key word underlined on the evidence card that you read out, and that key word represents an item hidden somewhere on the gridded game board. This part, then, is that element of the game which it turns out I was very familiar with. My Other Half has played plenty of these hidden object games on her phone and tablet, and this section of Crime Scene London 1892 is therefore very familiar. Once you find the item, note the grid reference it inhabits, then take the evidence card of the same number. In the bottom corner of that card will be a letter a through h. This is an indication to turn over the crime file card of the same letter. On this card will be four different possible answers to a puzzle.
With me so far? Okay, but you’re wondering what the puzzle is. Look back to the evidence card. Each one is attached to the previous card by a coloured string, much like you see on a detective’s whiteboard in a tv crime drama (I think I’ve literally seen them all by now). Some evidence cards, however, have other strings on them, black and white striped ones, and these represent additional evidence cards that you need to find. It can take a bit of figuring out what it is you’re meant to be looking for at this point, and that’s part of the fun. You’ll get a real kick out of figuring out what the cards are hinting at, and there’s a tangible sense of victory once you’ve gathered all of the cards needed for the puzzle. Then it’s onto the next stage: what is the puzzle, and how is it solved?
There’s a feedback loop, then, and it’s one that functions much like the most successful of addictive mobile games. You figure something out, you master the mini-game, you move onto the next.
The puzzle solution will be one of those four answers I told you about, and each one of those answers sends you to a different key word hidden somewhere within either the story book or the evidence cards: you will be given a paragraph number, a line number, and a word number to find. Get the right one, and it’s the next object to be found at the crime scene. Get it wrong, and off you go to scratch your head and wonder what on earth you’re meant to do next.
What happens if you get stuck? There’s hint cards for each of the crime files, again labelled a through h. This piece of advice is probably obvious, but resist the hints as much as you can. Bear in mind that once a puzzle is solved, that’s it, it’s done. This is a finite game, and you’re only going to get one run through before all of the surprises are spent. Also, whenever you use a hint, you lose one reputation point. There’s a stack of reputation cards, and you will discard one whenever you find it impossible to resist the hint. The more hints you take, the less reputation cards you’ll have left at the end, and when you get there you’re going to discover that you need those cards to solve the final puzzle…
The Case Wraps Up
I had more fun than I expected to during the short time Crime Scene London 1892 takes to complete. I did stumble initially, but once I was in the flow I found myself pushing to solve the puzzles and get to the next. There’s satisfaction to be had in the way the game mechanics merge together. I will say that my final score reflects the low price and the fact that I had fun during its relatively short playtime. It’s not much more than the price of a cinema ticket, and the same length of a film. However, it cannot be ignored that once you’ve reached the end, there is no reason to play again. At that point you’ve seen absolutely everything the game has to offer. Pass it onto your other family members – as long as they’ve had no spoilers – or to a friend, get them into the grisly fun of murder solving. Just be very clear before purchasing that this won’t be a permanent addition to your collection. The thing with murder is that it’s much more fun when it’s shared.
