There were seven cases of homicide in Hong Kong in the first four months of 2022, which marked three cases – or 75 per cent – more than the same period last year. A recent notable case involved a man who allegedly murdered his girlfriend and was caught pushing her quilt-wrapped body on a wheel board along the street. Hong Kong Society for the Protection of Children. Photo: Kelly Ho/HKFP. Deception is a game of bluffing and deduction. At the beginning of the game, players are secretly given role cards to determine if they are an investigator, murderer, forensic scientist, accomplice (optional), or witness (optional). The goal of the investigators is to uncover the truth while the murderer must deceive and mislead the team. But the formula itself is solid and Deception is genuinely fun. This review seems harsh because Deception so easily draws comparisons to three of the best games ever made. But trying to decipher vague clues with a group of people is enjoyable. Seeing what choices the forensic scientist could have made with each clue card adds another layer of thought to the guesswork. If you group loves this style of game Deception is going to be a solid addition to your collection. Exploring some of the optional rules and variants in the rulebook might be necessary to make the game work best for you, but I’m glad the options are there. It’s not a Resistance killer or even a Mysterium killer, but I can’t deny it’s a good time. To setup the scene all event scene tile (which have blue text and paragraph information on them) should be returned to the box. These are used for a variant which can be played with in later rounds.

The investigators will win unless the witness can be guessed. If any part of the evidence is wrong, then the forensic scientist will say no. No other clues are given if the accusation is wrong. Each investigator only gets one accusation per game. Will the Investigators be perceptive enough to successfully solve the crime or will the culprit(s) accomplish the perfect crime and get away with murder? The set-up is pretty straightforward. Shuffle the blue ‘means of murder’ cards and the red ‘key evidence’ cards, and place four of each in front of each player. Then give each player a badge token. Put out the ‘cause of death’ tile and the four location tiles, before putting the remaining tiles face-down in a draw pile. Place the bullet markers on the table. At this point, each player is given their secret role card. After each player has had a chance to present their opinions, the Forensic Scientist moves on to the second round of Evidence Collection.

If you are playing the murderer or the accomplice, you want the game to end without you being properly prosecuted. If the murder does get caught you have one last chance to win if there is a witness in the game, if you kill the witness then the murderer and accomplice go free. If you are playing the accomplice, you want to draw attention away from the murder any way you can. ROLES Depending on the number of players, there may also be an Accomplice and a Witness. The Accomplice wins jointly with the Murderer if the Murderer goes undetected. And the Witness is on the side of the Investigators. Deception in Hong Kong is a murder mystery game where one of the players is the murderer. Players will each have one secret roll from an investigator, witness, accomplice, or the murderer. Depending on what role you get changes your win condition. There is no set amount of players for deception, however, it is recommended that there be at least four players. If there are less than four players, the game may be less fun and more difficult. What Does The Witness Do In Deception? And the good thing is, you are provided with nearly 300 evidence cards that can get dealt out in a myriad of different ways, so the risk of repetition is really very rare.

If at any time a player wants to make a guess to Solve the Case, they can do so. However, each player (other than the Forensic Scientist) only gets one guess during the game. So they need to be judicious when to do so. If they make an incorrect guess, they aren’t out of the game. They can still participate in all the discussion to help catch the murderer, but they just can’t make another guess. If that seems too tough for the murderer, you can always add some extra roles: an accomplice helps out the murderer, giving them cover for their fake theories or by drawing attention to themselves so the murderer can avoid suspicion. But with that many criminals involved, there’s bound to be a witness, which is an investigator who knows which players are the murderer and accomplice, but not which is which. They also have to be extra careful with their knowledge. If the investigators solve the crime, the murderer and accomplice get a chance to guess the identity of the witness, winning the game if they get it right. Most players are Investigators trying to solve the case. One player is the Murderer who is trying to remain undetected through the game’s 3 rounds. The players are not allowed to interrupt or disturb the player making their Presentation, EXCEPT to make an attempt to "Solve the Crime". As long as one of the Investigators correctly identifies both the "Key Evidence" and "Means of Murder", the Murderer is arrested and the Investigators win the game as does the Forensic Scientist.But compared to the agony of being the ghost in Mysterium, the tension in Deception feels so watered down. It’s diet tension. You give some clues and hope that they figure it out. When you draw a new card you give them the best clue you can and wait. Usually the best clue is pretty obvious because the choices are so limited. I hate to compare again, but it’s hard to overstate how much Codenames and Mysterium open up the potential for creativity and truly puzzling clues when the clue-sets are the entirety of the English language and maddeningly opaque surrealist art, respectively. Then, secretly deal out the role cards to each player. It is vital that, other than the Forensic Scientist, who runs the game, players’ identities remain known only to the person holding them.