A cat-and-mouse game of lethal consequences
As fans of logical deduction games, 🗡️Intent to Kill was on the top of our list for #GenCon2024 ‘s new releases. It is a deduction game with a 1v1 twist, with one player playing as a detective and the other as the murderer. The game actually goes up to 4 players, but you just play in teams deciding together what to do, so I think the game was originally designed with 2p in mind.
🕵️Playing as the detective you have 5 rounds to figure out which of the 20 civilians on the map is the culprit, and what their motive is. Each round a new murder happens, which gives you clues about the motive, and you can move around questioning civilians about features of the suspect - their gender, age, build and height. Furthermore you can use 4 types of buildings 🏥 to assist you.
Playing as the culprit your job is to make the life of the detective as hard as possible, and try to misdirect him in every way you can. Primarily by choosing your targets in a way that could fit all 6 motive cards in play. As for questions by the detective: you have to honestly answer with yes or no (e.g. “is the suspect 40 years old?”), however lucky for you there is a social group chosen by you that supports your heinous cause. If the detective questions the murderer by chance or a person from this group you can choose to lie. 😈
As you might imagine, playing as the detective you won’t trust any answer at first, but luckily you will get to know some social groups that are definitely not the supporters. But there is always that little doubt, and time is running out quickly so you cannot ask too many “safety” questions.
My favorite part of the game are the motive cards. 🙃 They are thematic and give a fun constraint. So while playing the deduction game as the detective is inherently more interesting, playing as the bad guy has its moments too.
While you play with 20 civilians, there are 54 in the box, and you only choose 6 motives out of 12 in a game. Additionally there are alternative setups with special rules and 2 modes of play so replayability is excellent. We are really enjoying this game and will be back with more! 😊
