Detective: Season One

There’s been a Murder!

8.25pm September 20^th, Manchester, England. A Mysterious parcel has arrived at HQ. Within it is a box containing the clues to three potential murders. My colleagues and I must work to solve these crimes and provide justice for the bereaved families. It’s time to grab a strong coffee and start piecing together what’s happened here. It’s time to be a detective, in Detective: Seasons One!

Digging through the Archives

In 2018 Portal Games released Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game. They took the idea of a murder mystery game in a box seen with games like the classic Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective and brought it up to date.

Gone was reading through that day’s newspaper for clues. In its place was access to the internet and digital police records. Also gone were lengthy interviews in a thick, case file and instead was a stack of clue cards.

The game went on to be well received and win a number of awards. However, some players felt that it took too long and the parts to read too verbose.

A new Sherriff in town

Enter, Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game – Season one. A game definitely aiming to win the award for 2020’s longest game title award.

This creation from Ignacy Trzewiczek, Merry Trzewiczek, and Weronika Spyra takes the concept and major mechanisms of the first game mulls over all the feedback they got from it from players and reviewers, and produces a streamlined and far more accessible package.

Detective: Season One, contains three stand-alone cases, meaning unlike the original you don’t need the same playgroup. Each case lasts 90-120 minutes rather than the three hours plus of the original. It is for one to five players and has stripped down mechanisms making it more accessible to players.

Working the case

To play the game, players simply layout the location/time track board, grab a note pad and pen, an internet-enabled device (I recommend a laptop), and the short rule book. After familiarising themselves with the rules the players turn to the case briefing page, read it out, and follow the setup instructions listed.

Players simply pick out and read, from the deck, the first card indicated in the briefing. At the bottom of each card, there are new leads to follow. There may also be notes to consult the police records for further clues and information. Each card you read takes up a set amount of time, if you need to travel to a different location then that will use up time too. Once the allotted time is up the game ends. There is a set of questions to answer. Get them correct to win the game.

Some of the cards contain the “dig deeper” option. Here, in exchange for spending a “skill point” you get to do that classic Columbo “Just one more thing”. You up the ante with a new and unexpected line of questioning, or give a location a fingertip search. Digging deeper can open up access to key information that will help you make sure you are on the right path or discover a key piece of information. But skill points are limited and hard to come by so it is important not to waste them going further down the wrong track.

A Detective’s Life

The immersion of Detective: Season one is where this game shines. We found ourselves with notes all over the place, looking back over files we had received and talking over interviews with each other.

We would then walk through the actions of the people, trying to work out what had happened, who was involved, and why. It is easy to start following the wrong trail and quickly find yourself at the wrong conclusions. If things go bad though, the game is easy to reset and start again.

The game cleverly does not tell you the answers to the questions until you tell it to, which means you can restart a case without huge spoilers. But of course, it will be easier the second time around.

When I played, we failed to solve the first case even on our second attempt, then we were able to solve the second and third case after a lot of head-scratching.

Busted down to beat cop

My only real concern is I’m not sure where this game sits in the market place. At £25 this is a more accessible price point than the original, but you are only getting three cases. For a similar cost you can get ten cases in one of the Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective boxes. Although in my opinion Detective: Season One is more enjoyable than Sherlock Holmes. Ff value for money is important to you and you don’t mind being made to feel utterly stupid then Sherlock Holmes may be the better option.

The shorter playtime also means it doesn’t lend itself to being an entertaining evening of a murder mystery. For that, I’d still recommend the original Detective game or a stand-alone murder mystery evening game.

For this reason, I feel Detective Season One aligns itself more with the “escape room in a box” type games. If you enjoy games like Exit and Unlock!, then Detective: Season One could be an excellent choice for you. It’s perfect for getting a small group of people around a table, putting their heads together, and talking out the mystery. I massively enjoyed it.

The Debrief

Portal Games have successfully created a streamlined version of the original Detective game. They have listened to feedback and fixed all the issues of the original to make a sleek, immersive, and thoroughly entertaining murder mystery game.

If you were eyeing up the original Detective but were concerned about group play or game length then your prayers have been answered.

The immersion of Detective: Season one is fantastic. Although I very much enjoyed the game solo, playing as a group was excellent. The game could even be played remotely over video chat with one person reading out the cards and another reading the information in the database, and another taking notes.

Detective: Season One is the perfect jumping-on point to test the waters of this type of game. It is really easy to learn and teach the very straightforward rules. It is a great choice for fans of escape rooms and social deduction games too.

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