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Chronicles of Crime: Welcome to Redview
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Description
Lucky Duck Games' Chronicles of Crime has very successfully blurred the lines between board game and app with stellar integration. The base game casts you as a modern detective out to solve some murders, with the help of various specialists. This worked via an app which managed and dished out the story elements depending on how you questioned people and approached the evidence.
This is all handled via QR codes. For example, to head to a location you simply scan that locations QR code. Want to speak to someone there? Scan their card. Want to then ask them about the fingerprints left at a scene? Scan the relevant evidence. It’s a simple but elegant system that sees the app intelligently translate the scanned items into relevance - scan a footprint and you will ask people their shoe size for example.
In the first expansion, Noir, you lost access to your mobile phone and team of experts on standby but gained some actions. Getting nowhere with a potential witness? Try bribing or intimidating them. Burly security guard blocking your way to a crime scene? Break in later. The catch is characters remember your actions and react accordingly.
Welcome to Redview, perhaps, shakes up the formula the most by ditching the cops/PI angle in favour of an on-theme Scooby Doo/Stranger Things mash up. This time you play as a group of teenagers, with curfews and all.
The character you choose is persistent throughout the game as the story of a small town with big secrets progresses. Each character comes with their own player sheet listing their stats and holding energy tokens. Instead of being limited to four actions, you perform skill tests in one of three areas resulting in a fail or a pass. Skill tests are performed by a dice roll and dice can be re-rolled at the cost of energy. The app interaction works the same way but it’s a testament to the strength of the system that it feels suitably different.
As teenagers you don’t have the same presence as the previous stories, and this really comes through. Break your 10pm curfew to see what I mean! Ultimately, Chronicles of Crime represents a fantastic purchase whichever adventure you take, and with the small cost of entry it’s worth taking them all.
Player Count: 1-4
Time: 30-90 Minutes
Age: 14+
Chronicles of Crime: Welcome to Redview is the second expansion for the amazing cooperative detective game, Chronicles of Crime. In Welcome to Redview, you play as a group of teenagers in the 1980s, trying to figure out why strange things are happening in your small town.
Chronicles Of Crime
Chronicles of Crime is the award-winning surprise hit from Lucky Duck Games. It is a detective game set in modern-day London, which uses an app and QR codes as well a VR module (a separate item you can buy, which I very much recommend). Chronicles of Crime is a heavy narrative game with relatively few components. You will discover evidence throughout the game in the form of cards.
Characters are also shown in the form of cards, which can range from suspects to others will who aid you along your investigations. All of these cards have scannable QR codes which let you gather evidence or engage with characters.
The app is mostly brilliant. It keeps everything immersive, even with the lack of components. The stories are very interactive and can range from easy to extremely challenging, making each case unique. To do all this, you simply scan a location, character or item. This is your means to interview suspects and present evidence. You scan a character and then scan the item or other character; this prompts the suspect to react. To move location, you simply hold the ‘scan’ button and move the phone over the location to move there. Everything is managed by time, which is reduced with each scan of a location or character.
The VR module is used in locations to discover evidence. This works really well and fits easily over your phone. You have a time limit in the module and you simply call out what you see, and your crime fighting partners find the evidence card that closely fits the item described.
This continues in the new Welcome to Redview expansion, which takes place in small town in Maine in the 1980s. It adds new mechanisms, characters and mysteries to uncover.
Welcome To Redview Gameplay
The cases in Welcome to Redview are very different to the other Chronicles of Crime cases that you may have played so far. In Welcome to Redview, each player gets to play as their own character. Each of these characters has three skills: Fitness, Speech, and Mind. This is all still done using the app and scanning QR codes to gather clues and interrogate suspects. The biggest change to the game other than theme is the added use of dice.
When you perform a test, you will roll your die and add your stat to the roll. You are all working as a team, hoping to roll successes equal to the number of players. Each character is also given energy tokens, which they can use to reroll – trust me, you will come to rely on these. Luckily, you will regain your energy tokens with each day that passes in the game.
As I mentioned, you play as teenagers, which means you will need to be home by a certain time each night. This makes things interesting, as you only have a certain amount of time to do everything you need to accomplish before the night is through. If you do get back late, you will lose points. The main problem I found is that you might be in the middle of something that you will have to end fast or be willing to lose points.
Other than the actions and the theme, the game plays identically to the base game. Search for clues, gather evidence, interact with potential suspects, and figure out what strange things are happening in your town before time runs out. The clever app-to-board-game integration still works amazingly well here.
Final Thoughts
In my opinion, Chronicles of Crime: Welcome to Redview isn’t quite as good as the first expansion, Noir. However, I will say that one thing this expansion does really well is giving players more input in the game, due to each person having their own character. I would still say that this is a must-have for lovers of Chronicles of Crime. I love the theme here; it’s got a very Stranger Things vibe and I love the new characters and art. Don’t be put off by the lack of replayability or the lack of fancy components; this is all app-driven and adds to the real immersion of this game.
Zatu Score
You might like
- Interactive
- Thematic
- Great use of an app
- Easy to teach
- Smooth gameplay
Might not like
- Table hog
- No replayability