A solo game with hidden movement?

Black Sonata is one of those games, whose elevator pitch immediately gets you interested - A hidden movement solo game! 😮
At least for me that was enough to be deeply intrigued: “How does it work? Hidden movement against an AI?” 🤯
Thematically the game is about searching for the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets. You play in London 1600, in pursuit of this unknown Lady, gathering clues and trying to deduce her identity.
Let's take a look under the hood! 🧐

There is a board with locations, each location showing symbols. Here’s where you will track the lady’s steps and move your own pawn. 🕵️
Then there is a deck of cards showing the aforementioned symbols - during setup you put these cards in a very specific order, which will then simulate step by step where the Dark Lady is. ☝️ Of course symbols can be found in multiple locations, so you are often unsure of her true location. There are multiple difficulties available in the rulebook.

The turn structure is simple: the Lady always moves once, meaning you move one card from the top of her deck to the bottom and update your tracker tokens. Then you basically either wait, move or try to confront her. Waiting and moving works just as you would expect, so I’ll just describe the confrontation, which is quite ingenious! 😮

🔍You take the key card of your current location and the Lady’s move card (making sure to put a fog card in the deck instead, so you don’t break her route) and put them together. Key cards actually have a hole in them, and you have to check if there is a Lady icon on the card behind or not. If you succeed you get to draw a clue card. This is where logical deduction comes into play! 😳

To find out who the Dark Lady is, you have to find out which 3 (out of 7) characteristics she has. Your first clue card will be pretty much useless, but as you gather more you will be able to deduce them. If you know the answer you just need to find her location one more time and check if your assessment is correct. This will be particularly hard, because the more clues you gather, the more elusive she becomes!

A brilliant, mind-boggling game concept!