Thames and Kosmos is known for their fun escape room/investigation games, and they’ve released a new series all about being immersive during the gaming experience. Masters of Crime features story-driven games that are a unique twist on murder-mystery games. We got a chance to try one of them, Vendetta! which was mostly a fun time!
One to five players work together to look at authentic-looking evidence, unearth clues, and complete puzzles to solve or execute different crimes (depending on the title). One of the main aspects that sets this series apart from a lot of similar games is the dependence on real world resources like Google maps, phone numbers, websites, and more.
Each game also has multiple outcomes to enhance replayability. There are four games announced so far in the series.
Shadows sends players to Amsterdam to heist a mysterious painting at the Bachmann gallery. In Rapture, players run a drug ring (oh my gosh), and must address the scandal related to an international superstar before the police show up. Incognito makes players assume the roles of FBI Agents that go undercover as dangerous criminals to look into the murder of a gang member relevant to their case.
Finally, Vendetta, which I got to try, has players summoned by the NYC Mafia’s godfather to investigate whether there’s a traitor in the ranks!
He confides in the players that he suspects there is a traitor in the family, so the players must investigate the various family members, examining documents, and interviewing witnesses. Every decision affects how the story progresses since you don’t get to see all the cards and documents at once.
Vendetta came with a detective board where you can put all your clues and information, a notes sheet, 12 envelopes with evidence, and 72 playing cards, which the players must work through as they continue figuring out how to move in the story.
The other three games, though not out yet, have the same number of elements with maybe one more or fewer envelopes depending on the story.
Gameplay itself is pretty simple. Start by reading the back of card 1 which gives you the instructions. You’re not supposed to open anything or read anything unless the cards tell you, lest you be spoiled or find something too early in the investigation that would only confuse you.
Each game has an associated link where you can get help hints, enter passwords and codes as you play the game to check the related puzzle, and transcripts for the audio in each game, making it more accessible!
Throughout the game, you’ll gain stars where you make an especially good decision. When you receive those stars, you’ll color them in at the top of the detective board (or keep track separately if you plan to pass the game on, which I did). The total number determines your result at the end of Masters of Crime.
Cards 1-4 are instructions, 5-8 have to do with the finale and get put to the side, and then you get right into it, on card 9. In this case, the godfather has called you to his villa and on card 10, you’re given more information about him, and three options. You can either express your sympathies, keep a cool head and start planning your investigation, or declare “Vendetta!” and vow to kill the lying family member at the end of the game.
If you pick one, you cannot do the other for the rest of this game, so there’s technically at least three full runs for the game before you’ve run out of things to do.
The game continues in this way with you picking cards and deciding what to do and investigating until you get to the very end. Overall, the Masters of Crime format is really interesting! I’m a huge fan of the choose your own adventure style set-up, and it’s fun to play a “bad” guy for once in a mystery setting. The art on the colored cards (each location has a colorful card, and then the location options for that card are in black and white) was really great.
Overall the game is entertaining, especially when working together as a team! How much fun you’ll have depends on how much you like using Google Maps and trying to find phone numbers or names or other answers to the clues in the game. Some of the Maps pieces seemed like an extra step to lengthen the game instead of it being truly immersive and realistic to an investigation. On the other hand, Vendetta had emails, audio recordings, and other types of clues, which are definitely fun!
If you like these kinds of experiences “in a box”, then the Masters of Crime universe is definitely for you. I think it took me about three hours to do one run-through, and I’m definitely planning to run through it again to see how the other clues and locations play out. I also didn’t write anything on the provided sheet, because I plan to pass this game off once I’m done!
You can pick up Vendetta directly from Thames and Kosmos, and the other games in the series should be out later this year.
Images and review copy courtesy of Thames and Kosmos
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