Re: Micro Reviews of Board Games From a Non-Competetive Perspective

It's been a while since I posted one of my non-competitive board game mini-reviews, so here goes.

This is a mini-review of: Crack the Case

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Crack the Case is kind of a party game for amateur sleuths.  The game comes with a ton of large cards which have two sides.  On one side is a short "mystery" you read to the rest of the group.  On the other side is the solution to the case that the reader keeps private. Then the rest of the group just asks questions of the reader that can only be answered by words like: YES/NO/MAYBE/IRRELEVANT/CLARIFY QUESTION.

That's basically the whole game.  Keep in mind that this isn't a game where you uncover clues and figure out some deep mystery -- the game is really about trying to come up with QUESTIONS that will help reveal the answer to the case (like trying to figure out how and why person X killed person Y).

We had quite a bit of fun playing it and liked the fact that it required no setup, and everyone could just sit where they want and shout out questions and all play at the same time.

Some "cases" were more enjoyable than others, but each case only takes 10-15 minutes to play and every one that we played involved moments where we were pleasantly perplexed and searching for the right question to ask to "crack" the case -- and eventually solved each one.

A big thumbs up for this one -- especially when playing with groups that don't like too much structure, want to jump right into something -- and it's also one where there is no pressure on anyone to come up with ideas, etc.  Since it's basically just a free for all of shouting out questions.

Final Rating: 8 out of 10.