Tag: Deduction

In Deduction games, players rely on their logic and reasoning skills to attempt to find the correct solution to a problem.

Super Mario: Level Up!

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Super Mario: Level Up!

Super Mario: Level Up!

In Super Mario Level Up! join Mario and his pals as you advance them up the Mushroom Kingdom while challenging other players to gather the most coins and reach the castle at the top.

Each player starts with a unique line-up of characters that they are trying to score the most points with. Players take turns moving any character up the board until a character gets to the top.

Once a character is advanced to the top board, players vote to see if the character stays or is kicked off the Mushroom Kingdom. It takes only one NO vote to get them off the board. And players should use the NO votes wisely as each player only has two NO votes in their hand. The round ends when the character is unanimously voted to stay at the top.

Score up your points and play another round. Game ends after three rounds.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Deduction
  • Racing

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • 10 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.25

Sunken Sailor

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Sunken Sailor

Sunken Sailor

Sunken Sailor is a game of deceit, sailor stories and skillful drawing. Each player is a sailor, but only one is the Sunken Sailor – can you figure out who? Sailors collectively draw an object that recounts a rowdy adventure you all shared. BUT there is a sailor among you that cannot recall the adventure and doesn’t know what is being drawn – that is the Sunken Sailor. The Sunken Sailor wants to keep their identity from the other sailors and to try to piece together what everyone is drawing. Sailors win if they can figure out who the Sunken Sailor is. The Sunken Sailor wins if he or she can go undetected or figure out what is being drawn.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Deduction
  • Line Drawing
  • Party Game

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 8 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

Stop Thief!

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Stop Thief!

Stop Thief!

An alert pops up on your smartphone: A crime has just been committed! Grab your investigator’s license and your keen powers of deduction and hunt down the suspect. But watch out because you’re not the only private eye on the hunt, and only one of you can slap the cuffs on the suspect and claim the reward. Get enough reward money, and you can finally leave this rat race behind and retire to a sunny tropical beach in the Caribbean.

Stop Thief is a family game of logical deduction for 2-4 players. An invisible suspect commits a crime. Only the sounds they make give them away. Listen to the clues and figure out where they are hiding. Play cards from your unique deck to move around the board, sneak through a window, or even get a private tip. Once you have the suspect pinned down, swoop in and make the arrest.

The obvious first step in this restoration was taking the electronic device and turning it into an app. Doing that allows for better sound quality and a more dynamic platform for different modes of play. Next step was ditching the roll-and-move mechanism and, in general, stripping out some of the luck and adding in a healthy dose of strategy. By replacing the dice with decks of movement cards, it also allows asymmetrical decks, which increases the fun and replayability. Game effects were also added to the suspect cards to further spice things up.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deduction
  • Hand Management
  • Hidden Movement
  • Memory
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.53

Stella

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Stella

Stella

Starseekers! Explore the sky and bring some light back to your world.

Stella is a competitive game in the Dixit universe. In each round, players interpret Dixit cards on a board after receiving a common clue word. Each player observes the Dixit cards and secretly associates these cards with the clue word, marking on their erasable personal slates the cards that they choose. Selecting the same cards as the other players allows you to score more points. Conversely, selecting a card that no one else chooses may cost you dearly.

At the end of the fourth round, each player calculates their total score. Whoever has the most points — which is possibly more than one person — wins.

Take calculated risks, but beware of the fall.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deduction
  • Party Game
  • Push Your Luck

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.14

SailorMoon Crystal: Imposterous

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SailorMoon Crystal: Imposterous

SailorMoon Crystal: Imposterous

The Deathbusters have captured someone from the Sailor Guardians team and replaced them with a Daimon imposter! By asking the team members questions and seeing whose answers don’t align with the rest of the group, the team can unmask the imposter and direct the rescue of their captured teammate before it’s too late.

In Sailor Moon Crystal: Imposterous, players take turns asking intriguing and open-ended questions related to the Sailor Moon Crystal series. Each player writes down an answer that they think will match the answer given by other players. The more answers a player has in common with the others, the more points they receive. The suspicious player with the fewest points each round, i.e., the one whose answers are most dissimilar from those of other players, might be the imposter and their pawn moves down the game board.

When a player — or multiple players! — exit the last space (Level 6) of the game board, the game ends with the imposter(s) having been revealed. All the remaining players win the game and rescue their captured teammate!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deduction
  • Paper and Pencil
  • Party Game

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 12 Players
  • 30 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.11

Rear Window

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Rear Window

Rear Window

Experience Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece film Rear Window in a game of deduction and suspense. Carefully observe strange clues and ominous patterns in the things going on in the apartments across the way. There are parties, knives, a saw, bickering, laughing, music…and a mysterious trunk. Do you detect a murder? Or is the secret, private world of the neighbors planting frightening ideas in your mind?

In Rear Window, one player takes the role of director Alfred Hitchcock — the “Master of Suspense” — and communicates via building windows clues and signs for the other players without ever uttering a word, ideally giving them enough to go on that they can figure out who the murderer is — or whether a murder even took place.

If a murderer is out there, you need to nail down all eight attributes of that person by the end of four rounds without them catching on to what you see and know.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deduction

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.57

Quest

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Quest

Quest

In Quest, all will show their true colors as Good and Evil struggle for the future of civilization. Hidden amongst King Arthur’s loyal servants are Mordred’s unscrupulous minions. These forces of Evil are few in number, but if they go unknown, they can sabotage Arthur’s great quests.

Players are secretly dealt roles that determine if their allegiance is to Good or to Evil. Then, players debate, reason, and lie as they decide who to send on Quests—knowing that if just one minion of Mordred joins, the Quest could fail. Quest includes 25 different characters and many different ways to play the base game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Deduction
  • Hidden Roles
  • Memory
  • Negotiation
  • Party Game
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 4 – 10 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.83

Phantom Ink

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Phantom Ink

Phantom Ink

Renowned mediums are competing to figure out a secret object and prove they can connect with the “World Beyond”. The first team to figure out the secret object wins!

To set up Phantom Ink, divide players so that the Sun team and the Moon team each have one Spirit and up to three Mediums. The mediums on a team share a hand of seven question cards, and the spirits begin the game by choosing one of the five objects on a card as the secret object. On a turn, the mediums pass two question cards to their spirit, with sample questions like “What color is it most commonly?”, “What fictional character has it or uses it?”, and “If it were a musical instrument, what would it be?”

The spirit discards one question card face up, then returns the question card it’s going to answer to their mediums, then slowly writes the answer one letter at a time for all to see. As soon as the mediums think they know what this clue word is, they yell “Silencio”, and the spirit stops writing. The other team of mediums might see only the letter “Y”, but if you know the question is “What color is it?”, then you know the clue must be “yellow”. To end your turn, draw two new question cards.

On a turn, instead of handing over question cards, you can attempt to guess the answer — and to do so you write like the spirits, one letter at a time. If you write an incorrect letter, the spirits will stop you, marking out your error, with your partial guess giving the other team more information. If you guess the entire word correctly, you win!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deduction
  • Limited Communication
  • Party Game
  • Puzzle
  • Targeted Clues
  • Team Based
  • Word Game

Game Specifications:

  • 4 – 8 Players
  • 10 – 15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.33

Paranormal Detectives

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Paranormal Detectives

Paranormal Detectives

You open your eyes to discover the most horrible truth of a lifetime… It has just come to an end and you are a ghost, floating in the air! Terrified, you look at your own body. A group of strange individuals have gathered around your mortal remains, watching it closely with sparks of fascination in their eyes. They want to communicate with you to discover how your life ended. You need to talk to them and reveal the truth so the culprit can be judged!

Paranormal Detectives is a deduction party game. One player takes the role of a Ghost. All other players work as Paranormal Detectives and need to discover how the victim died. Using paranormal abilities they will communicate with the Ghost, asking open questions about the details of the crime. The Ghost answers in a variety of ghostly ways – by arranging a hangman’s knot, playing chosen tarot cards, creating a word puzzle on a talking board, drawing by holding the hand of a detective and many more!

Game Mechanics:

  • Acting
  • Deduction
  • Hand Management
  • Line Drawing
  • Party Game
  • Pattern Recognition

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 30 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.69

Mystic Paths

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Mystic Paths

Mystic Paths

In the deduction game Mystic Paths, players are challenged to navigate paths through a labyrinth called the Eternal Forest. Each player’s path is unique — and only you know the way. However, you cannot traverse the forest alone. Your teammates are needed to open the sealed portals along each step. Give clever clues, hope your teammates can read your mind, and complete your journey!

To complete the journey, each player takes a turn providing clues about which portal is their next step. Each step can have up to five different portals, but only one is the correct one, so players give clues that relate (hopefully) to the correct next step.

The challenge is that the only clues available are cards that have been dealt, so sometimes the clues may not relate to the next portal of a journey, which means you have to get creative. This is where you need to try to read the minds of your teammates. For example, the next portal on your journey could be the word “anteater”, and your clues are limited to cards you are dealt, like scary, or tall, or handsome. Which would you choose as your clue?

The game takes place in five rounds. Beat the game by having everyone complete their own journey before the five rounds are over.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deduction
  • Limited Communication
  • Party Game
  • Targeted Clues
  • Team Based
  • Word Game

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.70