Work together to solve crimes 2 to 4 players ages 7 and up
We Detectives is a cooperative game where players are working together to find all the evidence to convict the criminals. As you might know, our family loves a good who-dunn-it game. Clue is a favorite as was Clue Jr when the kids were smaller. (Truth be told, they still request to play Clue Jr even now.) When I saw We Detectives in a second hand shop it looked so good that I had to buy it even though our family has moved on from this age group. But a who-dunn-it CO-OP game? We had to try it.
Co-op games are a great way to bond as a family as everyone work together—so everyone either loses or wins together, no hard feelings. Other co-op games include Lost Puppies, Forbidden Island and Ants the dice game.
Setting up We Detectives
To start We Detectives, the location pieces are placed on the board. Because these are tiles instead of board pieces, it makes the game different every time.
Next, the evidence tiles are given out equally to all the players. These are the pieces that they have to “solve”.
Last, the We Phone tiles are shuffled and placed beside the board.
Playing We Detectives
First, he will flip over the top We Phone tile and read it. He will then follow the directions on the card. He can move up to 5 spaces unless the Phone tile said otherwise.
Collecting Evidence
The evidence each player needs to be find are found on the tiles that were handed out at the start of the game. To collect a piece of evidence, a player needs to visit the location where it can be found. Some evidence can found in multiple spaces where others can only be found in one location. A player can gather more than one piece of evidence at a time.
Once a piece has been found, the tile is placed in the middle of the board in it’s spot.
When a player has found all of her evidence, she can take tiles from her fellow detectives.
We Phone Tiles
There are a variety of tiles. The team can decide together who should carry out the actions on each card.
There are some tiles that let you take extra moves. There are some that just say to take your five moves.
Then there are the tiles that have your items stolen. These tiles need to be dealt with by the player who turned it over and before he can do any other tasks.
Meeting tiles have all the deceives meeting at the café space and getting then to each move eight spaces.
Next are the tiles that report hazards. These hazards block players from collecting evidence and have different ways to clear them. A hazard does not need to be cleared for the team to win. For example, if there is a fire at a location where you already picked up the evidence from, then you can ignore the hazard.
Last are the tiles where evidence goes missing. When this happens and the team has not collected the piece, they get to place the tile to the side with no effect. On the other hand, if they have already collected it, the piece is taken from the middle of the board and placed in the players hand. The player now has to go back to the place where he can pick up that evidence.
Winning We Detectives
When all the pieces of evidence are collected and placed in the middle, the We Detectives win. On the other hand, if all the We Phone tiles are flipped over and any of the evidence is missing, the criminals walk free and the detectives lose.
Levels of Play
After playing, and winning, a lot of games, you can make the game harder by playing with less Phone tiles. The less tiles, the hard the game will be to win.
In addition to this rule, you can make it so that only one piece of evidence can be gathered in one move. Also, you can play where the person who turned over the Phone tile has to complete the action.
What We Like
First, the quality of this game is top notch. The tiles are all sturdy as is the board and the box.
Next, we like that players work together and can trade Phone cards and evidence.
We also like that the location places are tiles instead of being fixed on the board, this makes it more interesting.
What we liked most is that kids can play this game all on their own after getting a crash course on how to play.
What We Don’t Like
First, although the quality is good, the mover piece stands are impossible to use. We fixed this by borrowing from another game.
Next, we found the instructions far too hard to follow at first. The first time we played, we had no idea what to do when a piece of evidence went missing. The directions on the phone tile could be clearer.
And then there is the issue of collecting evidence in the first place. To know where you have to go, you need to look at a chart in the instructions. On top of that, the chart uses pictures and some of the pictures look very similar. After playing a few times, one of us noticed that the location tiles actually have the evidence on them too but they are very small and subtle. Of course, after playing a few times you get to know the combinations and I’ve always found that children in this age group are experts at this.
A Wrapped Up Case
Overall, We Detectives is a good game. Its quality is good, its play time and playability are good. I know if we had had this game a number of years ago, we would have played a lot of it. I also know that the issues that we have with it wouldn’t be a big deal for the age group that it’s designed for. All of that to say, if you have school-ages kids, we do recommend adding We Detectives to your Family Game Shelf.
To shop for We Detectives, shop here. Canadians can shop here. We Detectives is a Tactic game.
Rating:
Pros: co-op game, lots of playability, game levels, quality
Cons: confusing instructions
Mom: working together, problem solving, critical thinking
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