Or it might come down to the last investigator who's trying to process everything shown so far, and everyone's on the edge of their seat as they make a final uncertain guess. I hope the scientist is a member of a decent union with a good militant rep because I don’t see them surviving in the job for long otherwise with this kind of attitude. I really do like this dynamic as the forensic scientist player has to use the new card, and has to eliminate one from the table. Each round, after an indeterminate amount of discussion, everyone’s supposed to go around and present their official hypothesis for weapon and clue within a 30 second time limit. It’s not enough for an investigator to identify the murderer, they also need enough evidence to convict.

A final frustration I had with Deception is that with the basic rules it seems too easy for the investigators. In other words, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong plays like the final deadly form of the Dixit World of Warcraft raid boss. If I want you to reflect on a colour in Mysterium and you reflect instead on the presence of a symbol that’s a disconnect between our frames of reference.players represent Hong Kong’s finest, and out of them one player is chosen to be the Forensic Scientist. If the murderer can correctly guess who the witness is, then the witness mysteriously fails to turn up to court that day and the murderer, sorry, wrongly accused citizen goes free. Each player's role and team are randomly assigned at the start of play and include the unique roles of Forensic Scientist, Witness, Investigator, Murderer, and Accomplice. Deception at its heart is a simple guessing and light deduction game, but when imbued with life by the players it can be so much more. Everyone closes their eyes once that’s been determined, and then everyone opens their eyes once more.

Each turn, a group is sent out on a quest, but some of them are secretly traitors with the power to sabotage the mission. 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. So, probably already laughing, you pick the one that seems most likely to drive people towards the proper culprit. Everyone else is dealt four lovely little “murder weapon” cards and four “key evidence” cards, creating a grim, criminal scrapbook on your table.Do you remove a clue that everyone has already gained as much information out of as they will, to prevent them from overthinking it? For me, it has exactly the right balance of all the key moving parts to bring out genuinely interesting game states.