Scene: Novotel Birmingham, U.K.
Date / Time: Sat / 3pm
Detectives: BoardGameMeeple and Mrs BGM, Chits & Giggles, Rory (Board Meetings)
Weapon of choice: Cardboard
During the Friday evening of the UK Games export I received a text message giving me the location of the promised rendezvous, it said “meet in the reception of Novotel”. There was only one Novotel nearby which is near the Airport. So on Saturday we jumped on the monorail at Birmingham NEC station and headed to the location.
Once there we sat in reception and waited…soon another gentleman sat down looking like he was waiting for someone. A quick check and exchange of social handles between us and we had 3 of the 4 required detectives. Dead on 3 Ignacy turned up as did our final detective and we were ready to start.
Ignacy said that to allow us to concentrate and focus on the story we would head to a hotel room for the next few hours….
We spent about 2 and a half hours working through the first story of Detective. I won’t talk about the actual story but I can tell you we had an outstanding gaming experience. For those couple of hours myself and my fellow detectives were immersed in this world Ignacy has created.
Ignacy walked us trough the rules as and when we needed to know something. This worked really well and allowed us to focus on the story at hand.
Cookies!!
Listening to the narrator and noting down clues.
As a detective you have access to the Antares N.I.A database which allows you to search for suspects names and evidence. Immersion level 100.
A small board allows the group to track which location they are currently at and serves as the day & time tracker. Each detective also has a special trait as per the card below.
Head in hands…I don’t think our decision making was that bad…was it? ???
Ignacy selfie with his “best” detectives…
Our note taker keeping track of key information.
Ignacy making himself comfy as the detectives work though the next part of the scenario.
The last part of the scenario is to write your crime report….oops is all I can say.
Let’s just say we will be playing this again once my pre-order arrives knowing that we got most of it wrong and I didn’t spoil scenario 1 for myself…phew!
Thanks to Ignacy to allowing to try out Detective and thanks to this lot for a great 2.5 hours of fun.
Final thoughts
I’ll try to keep this short.
I can’t remember the last gaming experience , scratch that, any gaming experience that has left me talking about it for the rest of the evening and to be honest the next day. The experience was amazing and while we didn’t do that great (I blame the rush at the end to get back over to the NEC) it still left a positive lasting impression.
For a group of 4 who had never gamed together before (or even know each other) we got on with the game and immersed ourselves in our roles. I’ve never felt more of a detective…I could well have been on CSI. In particular I loved being able to log into the laptop to investigate clues and suspects, nice!
Ignacy and Portal Games have got themselves an awesome game here and I hope it will bring as much fun to everyone who plays it as it did for us.
Looking forward to the full release!! And I hope further stories.