Friday evening was not a club night but still gaming took place.
I like to think we had a themed game night. The theme being deduction games. In particular Awkward Guests and Cryptid.
After seeing a review, albeit an old review from the Dice Tower, for Awkward Guests I purchased a copy.
I knew Jonathan was a Cluedo fan. He has one or two versions in his collection. Awkward Guests was billed by the reviewer (Tom Vassel) as a Cluedo killer.
Jonathan would love this game I thought.
So having ordered it, I messaged Jonathan.
It turned out he owned it already, had played it once, and didn’t have a good experience.
Oh.
That kinda deflated my bubble a little.
But that didn’t put me off organising Fridays gaming session. I just knew that Jonathan most likely wouldn’t come.
So I was a little surprised when Jonathan said he was coming. Also a little relieved because until then I only had one person commit to coming along. Three was the minimum needed for the evenings gaming to go ahead.
The new normal for me is to go straight from work to the game night. I’m there early enough to not only set up the tables but to grab a bite to eat also.
So by the time Anthony and Jonathan turned up everything is set up waiting, and I’m well fed.
We started off our evening of deduction with Awkward Guests.
As I mentioned previously Awkward Guests is meant to be a Cluedo killer.
Now I don’t have any particular strong feelings about Cluedo one way or the other.
During my formative years aka as a child I remember playing Cluedo once or twice. But memory fails me as to if it was a copy we owned or a family members copy we played.
I certainly don’t have fond memories to reflect back on playing the game. At best I know I played it.
However we do know I enjoy deduction games. So the glowing reviews did make me curious to try it.
I actually liked the game. I particularly like the hand management side of it. Having to decide which clues you want to keep from the other players (and then bury in the discard pile), which you are happy for others to know.
The only real criticism I have of the game is the map of the house and suspects on the back cover of the rulebook should be a separate sheet/board. That way players can just check a rule without disturbing a players turn and moving the markers. A single card player aid summarising the turn structure would also have been nice.
We played using the official companion app. Which meant if you guessed wrong you weren’t eliminated from the game. However you were not allowed to make a guess at the end of the next turn.
The companion app is just that. It’s not needed. But it’s handy and offers many more scenarios to solve.
What I’d like to see for this and Cryptid is a cheap expansion that just adds more physical scenarios. In the case of Awkward Guests a pdf or booklet. With Cryptid a deck of cards.
That’s all these games need just for those that don’t want to use the app or can’t for some reason.
Jonathan solved the case. I’m sure Jonathan will read this post at some point and hopefully share his updated views and what initially put him off the game. Until then the tl;dr is he enjoyed the game this time around.
Next up was Cryptid. We actually played three games of this in a row. These were pretty quick games. Maybe twenty odd minutes each.
I wasn’t using the companion app (it’s not really an app more a website). Plus we were playing basic rules not the advanced. Jonathan doesn’t like the advanced rules with the negative clues. So we play the rules he enjoys. For me it’s a fun game either way. Besides Anthony had never played the game before so made sense sticking to the basic rules.
I faired much better at Cryptid by winning two of the three games. And Jonathan winning the third.
This was a fun evening of deduction. It’s nice to get these type of games to the table. It’s almost refreshing to play something that’s a bit more thinky.
Can’t wait until we have a similar themed evening again.
First off, I do wish you’d turn back on the function for an automatic email update to be sent to subscribers, as I now miss most of your posts that a relevant to me.
Anyway, now I’m here and with that comment out of the way, my first game of Awkward Guests was a big disappointment to me. As you know, I am a big fan of Cluedo. Cluedo is my favourite mass market game and I would be happy to play if it was something that others wanted. Just to be clear, there are more modern games that I’d prefer to play over Cluedo, but for a mass market game, it is great. Sure, there are some issues that I have with it, one of them being the roll-and-move function of the game, which would be better being changed to an action point allowance system, but hey-ho, you can’t have everything!
Anyway, coming back on topic, I was a Kickstarter backer for Awkward Guests and was really looking forward to this ‘Cluedo killer’ game. It sounded right up my street. However, after reading the rules, I simply couldn’t work out what I was supposed to be doing (for some reason), so I turned to the publishers how-to-play video. Unfortunately, this was awful and that’s being kind. It was more theatrics that a straightforward rules video. The creators had an annoying French accent (not surprising, seeing as the game is by a French publisher) and the creators were dressed up as characters, which I found distracting. On the night of the game, we tried to play but were getting in such a muddle. I think we decided to call the game early as we were all getting more and more confused.
Fast-forward to our game the other night. The how-to-play video that you found was much easier to follow and I was surprised about how super easy the gameplay actually was. Another thing that we would have benefitted from on our first play was a bit more knowledge of the logic rules, something Friday’s game did not suffer with, as we all really knew and were prepared with how the logic works (things like knowing that the Berwick Sisters always move as two).
All that said to make the point that Awkward Guests will be staying in my collection and my initial group will be giving the game another go. I really enjoyed the deduction puzzle that was presented to me. I’m not sure if this is a ‘Cluedo killer’, because I think there is a place for both of them, but it was a more deductive game than Cluedo. I’m certainly happy to get more plays of this in.
On another note, I agree about the absence of a separate map board. I think you need one to allow players to scan the rules whilst the game is in progress. I also think this game would have benefitted from a little more explanation of how to take notes throughout the game, but after a couple of turns, it was fairly easy to keep track of things.
On the subject of Cryptid, this is a game that I’ve been thinking about getting a copy for myself, as the deduction is something that I have enjoyed on both plays. That said, I don’t know what it is about the ‘inverse’ rules that I can’t get. It just warps my brain and I simply don’t understand them at all!
I never switched it off! I’ll have a look into it.
And your comment about me having ‘one or two versions’ of Cluedo in my collection, shouldn’t that read ‘one or twenty-two versions’?
I didn’t want to make you sound like an addict ;)