Chronicles of Crime

• Designer: David Cicurel
• Publisher: Lucky Duck Games
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 12+
• Time: 60-90 minutes per case

Chronicles of Crime is a cooperative game of crime investigation, mixing an app, a board game and a touch of Virtual Reality.  With the same physical components (board, locations, characters and items), players will be able to play plenty of different scenarios and solve as many different crime stories.

Players start the app, choose the scenario they want to play, and follow the story. The goal being to catch the killer of the current case in the shortest time possible.  Using the Scan&Play technology, each component (locations, characters, items, etc.) has a unique QR code, which, depending on the scenario selected, will activate and trigger different clues and stories. That means players will be able to get new stories way after the game is released simply by downloading the app’s updates, without any shipping of new physical components involved.

The VR experience only requires a mobile phone. Players simply put the VR glasses (optional buy) onto their mobile device, and put the VR glasses on their nose, holding their mobile device in front of their eyes, to immerse themselves in the game’s universe and search for clues in a virtual world.  (NB: You can also use a modern phone with gyroscopes and move the phone around without need for the VR Glasses)

The base game comes with 1 tutorial and 5 scenarios, but more can be downloaded directly inside the app!  Each session last around 1h to 1h30 minutes and many scenarios are connected to each others in order to tell a much bigger story.

As you play the game, there is an evidence board on the table.  You will lay cards out here when instructed by the app – these people/things/places on these cards represent important clues in your investigation.  There are also Location boards – each coded with a Letter.  Each of these will represent a different location important to your search.  

You will also have a deck of Character cards – each is numbered for easy identification and location.  As you play multiple cases, you might use the same card again, and oftentimes it will be a new person – with a story specific for that case.  Interestingly, there are also some cases which are tied together thematically, and you might actually run into the same person as you did in a previous investigation!    Characters may be found at specific locations, and they will interact with you differently based on where/when you find them.

The game itself is super intuitive and uses the app heavily.  You choose the scenario you want to play, and you follow any setup instructions it might have.  Then, most everything is done with the app and the QR codes found on the clues, locations, items and characters, etc.  

The app is really well done, and it is cool to see how it deals with cards in different situations.  For instance, you might go to a location and search for clues; you will scan clue cards in and the app will tell you if they are significant to your investigation or not.  Later, you might scan a character card and start a conversation with them.   Now, if you scan the clue card, it will prompt a question about that item to the character you are talking to.  

Each time you do something, the time on the clock moves forward.  Asking questions, searching around, moving between locations, etc – each has a time cost associated with it.  Your overall score is determined in part by how long your investigation took.  Some scenarios may have a hard time limit in which you must solve the case.

Whenever you get to the end of the case, you go to the solution section of the app where you then answer a few questions about the case to see how well you learned the facts.  As you would suspect, you scan in cards that support your answers to the questions. 

My thoughts on the game

So, it’s not often that I’m reviewing a game from six years ago, but I honestly just played it for the first time a few months ago.  I was offered a chance to review some of the newer expansions for the game and the base game was sent along with those reviews as you need some of the components to play with the expansions.  The main reason why I had never played the game is that I had a very strong dislike of games that use apps when they first came out.  Though I’m still not sold on the app integration, I am warming to the idea.  Many gamers have told me that the app implementation of this game is amongst the best in the genre, so it seemed like a great place to start.

And… after playing through a few cases, I will admit that the app is pretty great and does a really nice job of acting as the mediator of the game.  It keeps track of everything that you know and have seen, and I suspect that it doles out information only in ways that make sense.  For instance, since it is an app (and not a fixed page in a book), you’ll find characters at home or work during the day and then maybe at the pub at night.  Certain locations will be closed depending on the time shown in the app.  You really can’t find facts out of order or by mistake – things make a lot more sense in the world of Chronicles of Crime.  And… It’s super easy to ask questions or look at things – just scan the cards and the app does the rest.

Overall, the stories which I have experienced so far have been pretty detailed and, more importantly, the stories make sense.  Unlike some other detective games (Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective – I’m looking right at you), there are no impossible mental leaps needed to solve the case.  Talk to the the right people, ask the right questions, and everything will fall neatly into place.

There is plenty of room for discussion amongst the group – you can talk about the facts that you’ve learned and develop your theories about what happened.  You can also talk out how you want to proceed next.  As each action in the app eats up your precious minutes; if you’re trying for the best score, you’ll need to make sure not to waste time doing unnecessary things.  That being said, I like the way that many cases also give you the freedom to poke around pretty much anywhere you want and ask anything to anyone that you come across.

Now that I’ve gotten my feet wet in this universe, I can see the potential for so many different directions.  The characters, items and locations are fairly generic, and they can be used in many different stories, and the app will tell you what the locations are and who those characters are in the particular scenario.  There are five cases in the base game, and plenty of downloadable scenarios in the app as well.

I’m still not 100% sold on games fully reliant on apps, but if my initial experiences were with games with an app like this one, I probably wouldn’t still be so suspicious.  I’m looking forward to trying out the two expansions I have and see how those are different from the base cases.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Ryan P
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral. 
• Not for me…