To start your murder mystery, you’ll need about 2.5 hours. There’s no reason you can’t play on your own, but the game is recommended for 2 to 6 players. Because of the incredible production quality and effort the game designers put in, you’ll also need your phone, ideally with a laptop too. The Hidden Games Crime Scene games are published and designed by Hidden Industries, a company out of Germany. They first launched this series of games in Germany in 2019 and have been expanding to other countries, finally hitting North America this year. There are a total of ten different versions of this first case, each localized to a different country. The copy I was sent is the Canadian version which is called The Maplebrooke Case. A string of horrifying homicides has been reported across the city in this gripping murder mystery game. To bring the perpetrators to justice and reinstate peace of mind for residents, you’ll have to: The BEST crime-solving puzzle game needs your detective skills! Step into a riveting world of danger, betrayal and murder! Are you ready to find hidden objects or master match-3 puzzles as you unravel the twists and turns of an LA homicide mystery?

Hidden Games Crime Scene: The Midnight Crown - BoardGameGeek Hidden Games Crime Scene: The Midnight Crown - BoardGameGeek

The one bit of advise I have for people is to try and keep your notes separate. Use post-it notes and don’t write or draw on the evidence. We did which means we couldn’t pass the game onto anyone else. It’s a single play game so, once you don’t draw on it, you can easily pass it onto friends and family to try out.

While great for immersion this does lead to the biggest problem with this game. To play this game requires more than what’s in the box and it requires things that not every gamer may have. While cell phones are pretty ubiquitous, not everyone has one, and not everyone that has a phone has a Facebook account.

Hidden Games Crime Scene - The exciting and realistic crime game Hidden Games Crime Scene - The exciting and realistic crime game

When playing Case One of the Hidden Games Crime Scene games the players work together to answer four questions. How did the suspect die? Who sent you the envelope? Who sent you the torn letter? Who committed the crime? To solve the case the players are presented with a plethora of information both in the form of physical clues in different formats as well as digital breadcrumbs leading the player online and to their phones. In particular, The Maplebrooke Case has you solving the murder of Max Glover who died at the county fair in Maplebrooke B.C. The BEST crime-solving game needs your detective skills! Step into a riveting world of danger, betrayal and murder! Are you ready to find hidden objects or master match-3 puzzles as you unravel the twists and turns of an LA homicide mystery? Since this is a mystery game and I don’t want to spoil anything, we haven’t recorded an unboxing video. In addition, the pictures I am sharing in this post shouldn’t give any information away or spoil the game in any way. This is a massive yes from me. It’s not a very cheap game at €30, especially for the uninitiated when it comes to “board games”. But the production quality of the game is incredible. By the end of solving our mystery, and we did successfully solve it all, we could absolutely see how the price is justified. Overall we had a great time playing through Hidden Games Crime Scene: The Maplebrooke Case. We played with three players, myself, my wife and my mother-in-law, and we all felt that it was the perfect difficulty level and length. The clues were just difficult enough to make you feel smart when you figured them out and we all loved how there was lots of corroborating evidence to help confirm our theories as we went through this case. We ended the game feeling good about how we did.The famous Midnight Crown, an heirloom of a rich aristocratic family, was stolen from a museum in “Groß-Borstelheim” during the Long Night of Museums and a mysterious something was left behind. A construct of intrigue and secrets is knitted around a supposedly simple burglary. Be there live to support the Inspector a second time and catch those responsible in the act. Throw yourself headlong into an exciting crime case and find your way to the solution using multimedia. The village also has a few skeletons in its cupboard… Hidden Games is a German puzzle company. Over the past few years, they’ve nailed extremely premium experience escape rooms. They’ve also turned their hand to crime investigation games and it’s one of these that I bought to test out. As a team, you will need to analyse letters, interpret the police interviews of various suspects, make telephone calls and even do some research on the Internet. Your approach to finding a solution is guaranteed to be multidimensional. Study the fingerprints, collect all the information on your large poster, discuss the alibis and motives. For your research during the investigation, you will need internet access and a phone with which you can receive text messages. It is also helpful (but not absolutely necessary) if you have a laptop or tablet at hand. Mobile phones are also allowed! As for playing the game, it was a lot of fun. The sheer amount of information you are provided with is both impressive and overwhelming in a good way. I loved the variety of clue types, including plenty of things that made you feel clever when you figured them out. Many of the clues required deductive reasoning and there was even a math puzzle as part of the game.