Jolly Thinkers PJOL01 Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, Mixed Colours

Product Information

Social deduction works when people are freed from too much structure and are given the chance to be creative with their lying and manipulating. The players are crewing a spaceship and must handle a never-ending series of crises, from food shortages to enemy ships in hot pursuit, all while hidden Cylons work to sabotage their efforts. If I’ve got new players in a game then I’ll volunteer myself as the FS or see if anyone wants to take the role. I kind of burned out on the game after a while, through sheer over-play, but I still think it’s brilliant. The highest player count I’ve had for this is 10 players and if the game is under control then it still moves along at a good pace.

Do you remove a clue that everyone has already gained as much information out of as they will, to prevent them from overthinking it? Everyone sitting within hearing distance of your play group might be looking over a little warily at this point.I said at the start of this review that out of Dixit, Mysterium and Deception it’s this one I like the most. This makes it harder for the other players to discover who is the Cylon is as every player has spent the first half of the game helping. Well here you don’t necessarily need to be good at lying, you just need to know how to weigh up the evidence in front of you and make a convincing argument for someone else.

After three rounds any investigator who hasn't made an accusation should do so if the murderer along with the means and clue cards have been correctly identified then the investigators win otherwise the murderer wins. The games don’t get richer with repeated plays – they become frayed at the seams and increasingly threadbare. Can’t change it though – the investigation is picking up speed and heading for the side of the mountain and you need to start steering it towards safer territory. One player, the forensic scientist, watches this and must try to reveal the wrongdoer’s identity, not by speaking, but through silently linking the crime scene to those chosen cards by placing bullet-shaped tokens on hints. They choose one red and one blue card in front of another player and tell the story of how the murder went down.It’s also something that doesn’t actually work especially well for some groups because playing cards skillfully is fundamentally an act of empathy. But I appreciate that not everyone is going to want to roleplay Infernal Affairs as interpreted by Harold Pinter, so I’m happy to say that outside of this inherent absurdity Deception is just a really good game. The only way the forensic scientist can communicate with the investigators is through the placing of bullet tokens on specific clues in these categories. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is a devilish party game of deduction and deception for 4-12 players.