02820: Initial Thoughts on Detective


Yesterday we finally played through the first case of Detective: A Modern Crime Game, the new take on the detective game by the mad geniuses of Portal Games. It took us a while to actually play since I really wanted to make sure we assembled a fun group to play through the campaign. But once we settled on a group, it was just a matter of scheduling.

Now given our past plays of Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, I figured we were entering this experience with a bit of an advantage or at the very least relevant experience. But this game layers on additional elements that certainly set it apart, resulting in a very distinct experience. The game really makes an effort to immerse you in the setting and ultimately your roles as a team of investigators. There are a lot of game-y elements added in like skill tokens and of course the time limit but it all helps to weave an interesting story and a very intriguing mystery.

Launching the game as a campaign was an interesting choice as it really pushed the designers to craft a complex narrative with a lot of interlocking pieces. Your investigation in Case 1 may affect other cases and how that will all unfold is pretty interesting. I'm really eager to see how our efforts will pan out and whether we'll figure out the answers to the full campaign across the initial five cases.

The game does take a long time, but that was also our experience with Sherlock. In that game you really don't have a time limit and you can get lost repeatedly trying to find out more information even when sources may have gone dry. In this game you have a distinct target in terms of how long your investigation should take and the added game time comes from a lot of discussion and going back and forth over what the next course of action is going to be before moving on to the final report of the case. And that's really where the game shine as it does create a unique table experience between the players.

We did pretty well with the first case but there's still a long way to go. I hope we can find time to schedule another session soon as I'm eager to see what will happen next!

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