Grey Fox Games Deception: Murder in Hong Kong Board Game | Social Deduction | 4-12 Players | 20 Minutes

AMAZING!! MY WHOLE FAMILY LOVES IT!! It's a Great deduction game where you try to figure out the murderer among the players. PROS: -Easy to learn -Plays great with a party or family -Very fast once everyone knows what to do -Allows for people to role-play in a sensible way -You can choose to play with basic or advanced cards which helps change the social dynamic of the game CONS: -The Forensic Scientist has to be careful not to give away the murderer by talking, but once you understand how to play this role, it isn't difficult. -The theme is very basic modern crime and some of the cards are hard for younger children to understand. I would recommend only for middle-schoolers and above or have an older person help. The basic way it plays: One person is secretly chosen as the murderer with randomly dealt role cards while everyone else is an investigator. Then, they secretly tell the chosen forensic scientist (who is on the investigator team) their murder weapon and evidence cards (in front of them face-up) while everyone else' eyes are closed. Then the game begins.... How does the murderer blend in with the investigators? Well, everyone has 4 unique weapon cards and 4 unique evidence cards face-up in front of them and no one knows who's who besides the forensic scientist... and the culprit. The catch is... the Forensic Scientist CANNOT GIVE ANY VERBAL HINTS, CLUES, OR EVEN CONSULT WITH THE OTHER INVESTIGATORS. the only thing they are allowed to do is place markers on tiles noting: The Cause, The Location, and The Motive of the Killing along with 3 other random clue tiles (If the murderer had 'Water' as their chosen 'Weapon' card, the FS would put the clue marker on 'drowning' on the 'Cause of Death' tile, etc.) The FS puts out more of these tiles as the game goes on for 2 more rounds. In each round, After the clues are marked, every player can make a 30 second case of who they think the Killer is and what single weapon and evidence pieces they had picked in front of them. Even the murderer can do this and try to throw the other players off their tracks (lots of fun). To win as the investigator, you have to make a correct ACCUSATION. How? At anytime during the game, ANY PLAYER EXCEPT THE FORENSIC SCIENTIST can use their badge token to guess the killer, weapon, and evidence correctly. If the guess is completely correct, then the forensic scientist says "Yes" and the investigators win immediately. If the guess isn't correct or only partially correct, the forensic scientist answers with "No" and the player loses their badge token. They lose their only chance of outing the murderer. If all the players made accusations and everyone was incorrect, the Murderer wins. It's what I always wanted the board game "Clue" to be: A social murder mystery where you feel like you are part of the story. Lots of fun and HIGHLY RECOMMENDED FOR PARTY GAMERS.

Deception Murder in Hong Kong is such a fun game, especially if you have a big group! This is easily one of my groups favorite board game. The game is pretty simple, but having someone to clarify questions is greatly helpful. All of the aspect of this game is amazing. Pros: -Great for a group game (I prefer playing it with 6 or more players, but you can easily play it with 4-5.) -Even though everyone has one change of accusing someone they can still have a presence in the game -Well constructed cards and and great graphics (However the graphics can be interpreted in many ways making the game more creative and fun) Cons: -Key evidence and Means card are very small (I would've prefer a tad bigger card) -Too many interpretations (Even though the interpretations make the game more unique, it can cause a lot of confusion) -Easily repetitive (Don't get me wrong this game is very playable for many times, but I do feel like if you play too many games in a row the game play gets a bit stale. There are variations to make it more challenging to keep it from getting stale, but personally after 3+ hours it gets too repetitive) Overall my impression of this game is a solid 5/5. It is a very fun social deduction game and has many unique aspect to the game that is great for a group setting. One key idea to keep in mind when first playing is having the most experience/knowledgeable player be the Forensic Scientist as they can greatly direct the game play in a successful matter.

To start off, I would like to profess my love of the original version of this game. When I first played this with a group of friends at a Christmas party a few years ago, it blew us all away. It's such an immersive and interactive party game unlike any other. It truly gets your methodical brain going for the good guys, and your game-face and acting abilities going if your'e the bad guys! I can't tell you how many hours upon hours I have played this game, and how many circles of friends I have introduced this to, who all fell in love with it just as I did. That being said! After you play the original game so many times, you do kind of get to boil it down to a science. When you really have a firm grasp of all the different weapons and clues and scenarios, it becomes noticeably favorable for the investigators to narrow down their suspect and eventually deduce what the killer used for his or her crime. Eventually you start implementing house rules and game variants to try to make it harder for the investigators to catch the murderer. IN COMES 'UNDERCOVER ALLIES' TO THE RESCUE!! Wow, what a breath of fresh air! This game adds just the right amount of elements I feel the original needed to keep it fresh, explore new ways to enjoy the game, but also keep the core elements of what made the original so great. Again the new roles add just the right amount of balance that this game needed to make it a much less one-sided game for the good guys. Not only that but because there are more roles to play, more people get a chance to interact with the game in their own unique way, other than just being a standard investigator like everyone else. Also it helps out a lot that they have added a bunch more evidence and weapon cards to the mix. I really feel like they hit the nail on the head with this expansion, as far as ironing out any problems the original may have had. Like I said, they added just enough new elements to keep it fresh, balanced, and unique, while still keeping the core of the game that makes it so much fun. I am truly a big fan of this expansion, and I can't wait to play it again and again with my groups of friends! As far as the physical contents goes, there are a few things to note. One is that the role cards are all crispy clean fresh! Awesome, right?! Well, not so much if the original game you own is weathered and worn down, because now your crispy new expansion roles will be among your worn down original roles, and it might give away who has what if people take notice. An easy fix for this is to get card sleeves for your role cards. As far as packaging your new cards in with your original box, there should be plenty of room for your evidence, weapon, and role cards, but there seem to be a few too many clue tiles. You can still get it to fit int he box, but it's a little cramped, as the tiles will overflow a little bit. I believe the kickstarter box for the expansion is big enough. Bummer for those of us who didn't kickstart it though! It's not a big deal though. Exclusive Kickstarter role** The kickstarter included an extra role that you can easily implement yourself. That is the "Clever Accomplice" which replaces the normal accomplice. The rules for the clever accomplice are the same as the the original accomplice BUT as an extra level of difficulty, the clever accomplice chooses a piece of evidence and a weapon from a DIFFERENT character than the murderer. If these 2 pieces are ever accused of being the murderer by someone, the murderer team automatically wins the game. So the idea is for the clever accomplice to choose 2 things that are very similar to what the murderer has, in order to get people to guess that instead. Pretty sneaky!! Pros: -More Weapons and Evidence cards -More roles make it more fun for larger games -Game Is much more challenging for investigators to win (It's a fair fight now, as opposed to investigators always winning) -One of the best party games ever made Cons: -New role cards give themselves away in an old deck. You'll need card sleeves to hide this -Adds elements that might make it TOO challenging for the investigators, but luckily there are several new way to tone down and adjust the difficulty. -New tiles done quite fit in the box perfectly. Not a big deal though, just a little overflow If you're a fan of the first game, or even if you've never played the first game, you will absolutely LOVE this game. Your friends won't stop talking about how much they love this game. So much more involved than your typical party game. There's just no end to the fun you'll have!!

This is such a fun game. It is a combination of Avalon/The Resistance, Clue, and Mysterium. It plays better with larger groups of six or more. It also plays better with a more outgoing and social group. I played with a quiet and smaller group (five) and still liked it enough to purchase the game. When I played with a group of eight, loud and mouthy family members, the game really took off for me. People were up walking around the table to see each others cards. Accusations were flying. It was very animated. The whole group loved it and begged to play again. There was enough variety to play it multiple times, and the value for the money was great. Buy it!

Deception is like one of those bluffing party games where you have one group of "good" guys and one or two "bad" guys. For those of you who have played The Resistant Avalon, Spyfall, or games like Werewolf, you get the idea of the genre. What makes this game different are a couple of key features though: Theme: This isn't fantasy. Now I love sci-fi and fantasy and would have no problem playing those forever, but this does offer a more mature, real world kind of setting. There's been a murder and the investigators are out to solve it! Difficulty/Forensic Scientist: The game is challenging even without the murder getting involved to muck it up. As the Forensic Scientist, you're trying to guide the investigators to the right guess, unable to using your words and only slight indications on partially randomly generated options. As a plus, this keeps you active in the game even when you're not guessing because you have to pay attention in order to guide them right. Bad guys: We played three times and there was little pressure on murderer to constantly lie and deceive. You're basically throwing wrench into a pile of tools instead of shaking the whole thing up yourself. This is great, no awesome, if you have any players who absolutely dread getting a key role in the other games. This is a lot less pressure. My group specifically pointed this out to me. Now there is one downside to this particular game that I noticed during our second run through. This game is designed for up to twelve people. If you use all the options, you need four people to be able to see the murder's hand... but the card are small. If the two are on the other side of the room, it's just hard to see. The art is beautiful and perfect for the theme but if there is too much movement when everyone's eyes are closed... you can just hear where the unique roles are coming from. I'm sure we'll figure this problem out, but it feels the game could have used color card sleeves or something where everyone passes in their two and Forensic Scientist and the other roles just looks through them and knows by color which are the correct two. Anyway, if you're looking for a little change up in the large party group with bad person in their midst kind of games, this will be great for you. If you haven't been sold on the genre yet but are still hopeful, give this a try!

One of my favorite social deduction games. This game came highly recommended and it did not disappoint. I've played it with coworkers, family, friends and my gaming group. It almost never just gets played once, everyone wants to go again immediately. In this game for 4-12 players(I'd say 8 being best), one person plays a forensic scientist and everyone else plays as an investigator. Players are dealt 4 clue cards(main clue or piece of evidence) and 4 means cards(murder weapon) which are laid in front of them for everyone to see. A role card is also dealt out to everyone, secretly looked at and one of the players is the murder. The investigators all close there eyes and the forensic scientist tells the murder to open their eyes and point to one of their clue cards and one of their means card at the beginning of the game. These are now the clue and means cards that must be chosen by the other players to win the game. There are options to add other roles as well such as the accomplice and witness. The forensic scientist is leading the game by putting markers on randomly drawn scene cards that contain abstract clues to try and lead the investigators to guess who the murder is, what the main clue is and what the means of murder is. It is incredibly fun to play as the forensic scientist as it can actually be really difficult to point people in the right direction. It's also your job to give everyone a chance to speak so each player can try to persuade the other players who they think the murder might be and how they did it. An official guess can be made at anytime during the game but each player only gets one official guess. The forensic scientist then says yes or no to the guess...they are not allowed to say if one or none of the persons guess was right. The murder is secretly trying to persuade the other players to waste their guess on an innocent player, downplaying their own possibility of being the murderer. Lots of good interaction here and very easy to get people involved. A blazing fast setup and a quick rules explanation and you're off to solving the crime. There is a huge amount of clue and means cards as well as forensic scientist scene cards so the game could stay fresh for hundreds of plays. Highly recommend this social deduction game!

A great group game that makes for some interesting arguments. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is a hidden role game that begins with all, but one, player receiving cards that represent the murder weapon, 4 cards, and evidence left behind, 4 cards. The killer will choose one card each that is in front of him for the players to figure out. In Deception there are several roles the players take on; Forensic scientist, witness, killer, and accomplice. The forensic scientist is trying to help the group figure out who the killer is using special tiles. Each tile has word blurbs of a particular type of death, location, etc. The death tile always starts the game and has words listed like poison, severe injury, suffocation for the player to choose from. Each word placement on the 8 tiles the forensic player has will inch the players closer to who the killer may be. The issue is all the players have cards and a wrong word use can get the players to look at the wrong person. With six players, game plays very well with six, the game includes the roles witness and accomplice. When the killer chooses his weapons it is with their accomplice, whose sole goal is to through the rest of the group off by either making it seem they are the killer or someone else is. The witness brings the complication of knowing who the killer and accomplice is, but not exactly which or their evidence. The witness's job is to push the other players towards the people who did the murder. When a witness is involved in the game it also allows the killer to snatch victory away from the players. In a standard game when the players figure out the killer the game is over, but in a game with a witness the killer and accomplice have a chance to win if they figure out the witness player. This forces the witness to keep himself from being too obvious when pushing the other players towards the killer. The game is great, and really fast as a game can take 20-40 minutes to play. I prefer playing with a 6 player count as the witness and accomplice add a lot to the game. The abstract nature of the game allows players to make outlandish leaps about what the clues the forensic scientist is giving. This is funny as sometimes those outlandish leaps do not involve the killer or accomplice.

Really quickly became the game my group plays the most! It's a great game that brings good deduction mechanics and most importantly a big laughs&funs! I played about 10 games so far (6ppl & 4ppl) and here are my impressions: - It's really fast (15-30 depending on no. of players) and non gamers can easily pick up and also be really good at this game. - I love the components and its quality. Though I still used card sleeves to protect the role cards. If murderer card has some distinct damage or fold it will kill the game. - It's easy to swap away your Forensic Scientist role without affecting the game (if you don't like the role). - Murderer has much less pressure compared to other games like Resistance. It's really hard to tell who the murderer is from their behaviours as everyone's cards would match some of clues given. Also guessing the murderer won't finish the game as you have to guess the 2 cards completely correctly. So it's much more proper deduction than sniffing out the bad guy(s) which I really like about the game. - I would say it's slightly easier for murderer to win. It's mainly because some of the clue tiles cannot help to guess some cards at all (e.g. weapon is a poison and clue tile is weather). And you only get to change 2 clue tiles only. - Definitely would be more fun with large number of players (I think 6-8 would be perfect). I really really really hope to see an expansion for this game as there are good room for improvements such as adding more cards, roles, events, mechanics. I am not saying this game is not great yet but I can see that it can become even greater game with more stuff. Please make an expansion !!