The Secret of the Forgotten City

"A city on the verge of greatness"

"L.A. Noire" 

I used to review mystery video games quite often, though I have to admit I have fallen behind schedule the last two years, and even those reviews have become somewhat of a rarity here. Even rarer here however are posts on non-digital games, i.e., tabletop (board games). I have probably only reviewed a handful of them. Four years ago, I reviewed the tabletop game MicroMacro: Crime City, and that one has remained a favorite of mine since. So imagine how pleasantly surprised I was when I learned only a few months ago, an app version had been released!

MicroMacro: Downtown Detective (2025) plays in essence the same as the physical tabletop game. The player is presented a map of a lively where a lot of crime happens at the same time. The map is a delight to behold, as so many interesting (and often funny) things are happening in various beautifilly designed districts like a busy beach, a bustling market and a city center full of shops. Take a closer look however and you'll soon notice all kinds of crimes being committed: a dead body lying in an alley, a shoplifter in action, a thief on his way to sneak into an apartment... What is interesting about the map of MicroMacro however is that it is not a snapshot of one single moment: it simultaneously shows multiple moments of the same sequence. Imagine a crime being like a comic, with several panels used to depict how the crime happened and what happened next. In MicroMacro, all these "panels" are plotted on the same map, so you might see the thief entering the apartment, but if you look down at the street you'll see the thief preparing to climb up the wall, and if you're attentive enough, you might even trace him all the way back across the city map to when he first left his home. This is the core gameplay of MicroMacro, and this works exactly the same in MicroMacro: Downtown Detective.  

Just like in the board game, Downtown Detective consists of several missions, that vary in difficulty. The earliest missions will be easy, requiring you only to follow certain characters across the map, with many "moments" plotted on the map, making the pursuit simple. Missions are also divided in submissions or checkpoints, guiding you to what you should do next. Later missions will require you to pay more attention and may provide less guidance. You might be required to track several suspects as they all move around the map and find out which of them is the culprit for example, or the game expects you to make certain deductions based on what you see to guess where a character might also appear in a completely different place of the map. Downtown Detective in this regard feels generally similar to the board game, but with a caveat: Downtown Detective is a lot easier than the board game. As of now 25 missions are available (the first three being playable for free as a demo), but even the last few missions don't really match the mid-game missions of the board game. That is because Downtown Detective gives the player much more often confirmation about what they should do, or what they are doing correctly. The game for example clearly marks important scenes if you touch them, which confirms to the player that they are on the right track. This is not only true for the "major scenes" of a case, as the game will also mark minor relevant events, each time confirming for you you're doing it right. The board game doesn't confirm you're on the right track as regularly as the app version, making it a more difficult game. For example, if a character for example would put on a disguise halfway through, causing you to lose sight of them as they walk across city, Downtown Detective will always draw you attention to that fact ("Hey, he's gone. Perhaps he's put on a disguise?"), while the board game basically doesn't do that, allowing you to check the map yourself and noticing that small scene inside a house where you can just make out someone changing their clothes. These were the best moments of the board game, rewarding you for a keen attention for detail, but Downtown Detective really guides you along these moments, even if the core gameplay and mechanics remain the same across both versions.

Downtown Detective however does use some mechanics that aren't available in the board game, making use of the digital format. In Downtown Detective, you can freely in and out on the map (which of course isn't quite the same as just looking more closely at a physical map) and some details are only visible if you zoom in enough. That allows for some variety in the mysteries not seen in the board game, for example, in one missions where you are tracing a certain common object, that can only be differentiated from other lookalikes by noticing a small detail only noticable when zoomed in. The zoom in function is also really good for people with bad eyesight, which is probably great for people who have been interested in MicroMacro, but couldn't play it because the physical game does require you to squint your eyes at the map.

 

As far as I know, Downtown Detective contains a completely original city map. At least, I have only played the original MicroMacro: Crime City, and that featured a different map from Downtown Detective, though I haven't played the sequel board games to Crime City. The city in Downtown Detective starts out quite small, but it opens up in segments as you complete more missions. As of now, there are 25 missions, but there is a post-game message that says more content is to follow: something already foreshadowed by the fact you can see the silhouette of even more parts of the city that are waiting to open up in the future. The map is now smaller than it would be in the physical game, so I hope that with the future full map, the difficulty of the game will also be on par with the board game.

I might sound a bit negative, but I did really enjoy playing MicroMacro: Downtown Detective. If you haven´t played the board game yet, it provides a fairly good idea of how the board game works, which remains a great concept executed perfectly. Downtown Detective is a bit easy if you have already played the board game, as none of the missions match the later missions of the board game, but nonetheless, it's still a game I'd recommend if you're interested in MicroMacro, whether you´re a first-time player or a veteran, as the gameplay remains addictive. 

Foul Play

「これなら五手で詰める」

『名探偵コナン　緋色の弾丸』

 

"With this it'll be a checkmate in five turns."

"Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet"

Last year I wrote about Dash Shaw's comic adaptation of the board game Clue (Cluedo) and I mentioned there that while I play a lot of (mystery) videogames in general, I basically never touch analogue board games. Even my experience with Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, likely one of the best known mystery-themed board games, is solely though the videogame adaptation of said board game. It's just a genre I never had much interest in, much more enjoying digital games in general (not just mystery), but the last few months, I started to become more interested in these physical games, so I tried a few mystery board games out myself.

First up is Decktective: The Gaze of the Ghost (2020), a cooperative card-based game designed by Martino Chiacchiera and Silvano Sorrentino, and I believe first released in Italy. This game is one entry in a longer series and is one of those games you can only play once, as you'll have unraveled all the mysteries when you're done with the session, but it's actually quite fun and because you don't need to cut things up or fold things over, you can easily just hand the deck of cards to a friend when you're done. In The Gaze of the Ghost, you and your fellow players take up the role of an investigator, who's been called to a museum which is said to be haunted. It's after closing hours, and the guard has notified the police because the cleaning lady had vanished from the museum, even though the doors were locked and the guard has the key. The story starts with the investigators arriving at the museum, ready to search the place.

As said, this game is cooperative and card-based and the most eye-catching feature of The Gaze of the Ghost is of course how it actually utilizes the cards and the box that holds those cards to create a 3D reconstruction of the scene. It's really clever, as while the game is very compact and consists only of cards, it manages to really sell the visual design of this game. The players are encouraged to really examine the crime scene from all angles in search of clues, and you'll definitely be rewarded for looking carefully at everything. The cards are also what dictate the gameplay loop and the story developments. The deck of cards is numbered, and each turn players are to take a card. Some cards are for everyone to read and detail the early story set-up and/or significant story developments, but most cards are initially only intended for the player who draws the card. A card could contain an interview with the guard for example about the missing woman, or the card could be detailing some observations about the museum gallery or some strange object found lying around. A player whoever may not divulge the information on the cards they hold to the other players. If they think a certain card contains significant information, they have to play the card and put it in the shared pool, allowing everyone to read it and discuss its contents. However, every card has a certain value written on it, and you can only share a card with the others, if the value on the card is equal or lower to the number of discarded cards. Players can also choose to discard cards if they think the information is not relevant to the case, but that means they can't share that information with the others anymore and also that they themselves can't keep it in their hand. So a player has to decide which cards in their hand are worth sharing with the others, and which cards they can "sacrifice" in order to play certain cards, but there is always the risk that a card they discarded turns out to have relevant information after all. 

This makes for a game that's more than meets the eye, as you'll draw cards in a set order, meaning the game can sometimes play tricks on you by feeding you a seemingly irrelevant card first only to make you draw a card near the end of the game that shines a different light on the earlier card. The idea of the necessary clues being divided among the players, that there's a "shared pool of information"  but also imperfect information because cards have to be discarded, and that the players have to work together to puzzle the truth together is quite interesting. I played this game on my own, which the game says is possible, though I think this game is best played with two or three players. If you play on your own, you'll have to draw all cards yourself, so while you will have to discard cards, you will have at least taken a look at all cards in the game, meaning the idea of "imperfect information" that makes this game interesting is less strongly present. What also makes this a fun game is the fact that because the cards are drawn in a set order, the game also allows for story developments to occur. What starts out as a search for a missing woman, soon turns in a much bigger case once a few cards have been drawn, and that keeps the players on their toes. You really have to examine each card carefully to decide whether you're going to put it in the shared pool so everyone can take a look, or discard it all together. Once all cards are drawn, the story is "over" and you're asked a few questions to prove whether you figured the case out or not. It's a fairly doable mystery and while it's not an Ellery Queen-esque mystery that requires you to do 20 steps of deductions, I'd say Decktective: The Gaze of the Ghost provides for a fun hour of entertainment, and it's certainly also very accessible for those who seldom play board games (like me).

Decktective is a very compact game you could play with a friend on a bench: MicroMacro: Crime City (2020) most certainly is not. If you're into board games, you probably heard of MicroMacro: Crime City ages go, as this game designeed by Johannes Sich is quite popular, and truth be told: it deserves that reputation because it's really an incredibly fun mystery game. But you really need space to play this game. Because when you open the box, you'll find a gigantic map inside (75 x 100 cm), and you'll have to fold the thing out completely and place it somewhere where all participating players can have a good look at it. The map provides an isometric view of the titular Crime City and all of its inhabitants. It is seemingly a nice town with the usual shops, museums, a harbor, restaurants etc., but if you take a careful look at the map, you'll see all kinds of crimes occuring in the city, from robbery and stalking to outright murder. With the little magnifying glass included in the box, the players are tasked to work together on the investigation of 16 different cases that occur in Crime City.

Having to look at a gigantic illustration to look for clues of course reminds of the Where's Wally/Waldo books and Pierre the Maze Detective illustration books, but the most important thing to understand about the super charming map of Crime City is that is not actually a "snapshot" of a singular moment in Crime City. Imagine each event occurring in Crime City as a comic strip, with several panels detailing each event. These panels are basically all plotted simultaneously on the map of MicroMacro: Crime City, meaning you'll find the different stages surrounding a certain happening all across the map. For example, the box of the game actually already has a puzzle for the players: you see a dead man lying in a park and you're asked to solve the murder. If you then look a street up, you'll see the victim walking on his way to his murder scene. And a few streets away, you see him with a bag of money, etc. You can follow him all the way back across the map of MicroMacro: Crime City and eventually, you'll notice that there's a suspicious fellow following him around the map, and you can even find out where they came from and where they went after the murder. So all "comic panels" of a single event are drawn in the map, allowing you to trace everything happening before, but also after a crime. And now imagine 16 different cases being draw like this on this map, and on top of that a lot of other happenings occuring at the same time, and you can see why the map is so big.

Each case is represented by a number of cards, and the first card always points you towards a crime, usually a murder. For example, it will ask you to locate the corpse lying on the corner of the hardware shop and the supermarket. From there, it's up to the players to figure out what and why this happened. This is relatively simple in the earliest cases: you can trace the movements of the victim just by looking around to find where they were a few moments ago, and thus find out where they came from. As you do that, you might see the victim having a row with someone, so then you decide to follow that suspect across the map, and perhaps you'll see them go buy a weapon. But the difficulty soon ramps up, and the game will ask a lot more of your observative and deductive powers. A person you were following might take public transport, forcing you figure out where they got off or on, or perhaps you find a corpse that seems to have appeared out of nowhere: perhaps then you need to find clues on the victim that indicate where they worked or what places they often visited, find that place on the map and see if you can find the victim there. The later cases have you going across the map in multiple stages, following not only the victim, but also checking out what persons they met during the day, pick up on clues that may indicate a motive, find the means of murder or perhaps where the murderer has gone off too. 

It's a highly enjoyable game that also does a great job at easing you into the higher difficulties. Like I mentioned, each case is represented by a few cards. Personally, I enjoyed playing this game in the "expert mode": you only look at the first card of each case, the one that points you towards the crime you need to examine, and then try to figure out the who, how and why on your own without looking at the other cards in the set. The other cards do point you in the right direction as to how to progress next if you don't know what to do. They might tell you that you need to look for a clue that'll tell you where the victim was working, or point you to that curious object lying at the crime scene and ask you figure out where it came from. So even if you don't realize right away a character can ride public transport and appear all the way on the other side of the map, the hint cards will help and they help prepare the player for the trickier cases later in the game, which really demand a lot of your ability to observe the smallest details on the map and infer the meaning of what you see. This game is really enjoyable playing alone too by the way, and I think two or three players would be ideal too as everyone will be able to take a good look at the map and come up with suggestions where to look next, but I can imagine it becoming a bit too crowded around the map with four and more.

I know there are quite a few gamers among the readers of this blog, but I was wondering whether there are also people here who regularly play mystery board games and who could perhaps give some recommendations? I myself just tried these two, because both Decktective and MicroMacro: Crime City were easily available and seemed interesting, and MicroMacro: Crime City in particular is one I really want to recommend, because it's such a charming game that can become deceptively difficult. With the holidays coming up, perhaps these games would make for good gifts for others, or yourself!