Growing up I played a lot of Clue and then Clue Master Detective with my brother. In high school, I was introduced to the movie Clue, which remains a delight. After college, I was gifted Clue: Simpson’s edition and I have been part of a few Murder Mystery parties throughout my life. So the Murder Mystery deduction games have been a staple in my early gaming life.
Then, a few years ago, I discovered Search for Planet X, which in my mind is the single best deductive logic game. So when I was asked to review Kronologic: Paris 1920, I was excited to see what new wrinkles the folks at OriGames and Super Meeple could bring to the murder mystery genre.
Gameplay Overview:
There are three scenarios (with five unique games in each scenario), each with different difficulties. The game is played by up to four players. Each scenario has six suspects, six locations, and six time frames that you can investigate. Each suspect is in the Opera house at all times and must move to an adjacent location each time.
In the first scenario, Poison and High Society, each player is trying to identify who poisoned Detective Denis at the Paris Opera house. The only information you are given is that the assassin needed to be alone to poison him.
In the second scenario, The Phantom of the Opera, each player is trying to discover who is the Phantom of the Opera. The only information you are given is that the Phantom of the Opera is alone in each of the six time frames.
In the third scenario, The Singer’s Jewels, a team of burglars steal a famous soprano’s necklace and each player must find out who has the necklace in the sixth time frame and where they are located. The information given is that (a) the necklace starts in the dance hall, (b) the initial thief is the first person alone with the necklace in the dance hall, (c) any time the person who possesses the necklace is with only one other character, they hand off the necklace, and (d) if there are three people or the thief is alone, they keep the necklace.
Game Experience:
Instead of asking players questions like in Clue, each player takes turns finding out information about one suspect’s movements through a location or how many suspects were in a location at a given time. In a great mechanic, each query gives the active player a piece of secret information and a piece of information that they must share with the other players. Players then write down the public information and the active player also writes down their private information on their note sheet.
If you ask how many times a character was in a location, the card tells you to share that answer with the other players, but then secretly informs you of a specific time-frame that the character was in that location. For example, ask how many times the Journalist was in the Gallery, and you could find out that they were there twice; you then share this with your opposing players, but you secretly find out they were in the Gallery in time-frame three.
If you ask how many people are in a location at a given time, the card tells you to share how many people are in that location but secretly tells you one of the suspects is in the location at that time. For example, ask how many people are in the Dance Hall at time 3, and you could find out and have to share that there are 3 suspects in the Dance Hall at time 3 and secretly find out that the Baroness is one of those three suspects.
Using the public and secret information, you map out who is in each location during each time-frame until you have the information that you need to solve the scenario. You can also use deductive logic to determine where suspects are as they can not stay in the same place and must move to an adjacent location. For example, if the Detective never went to the Gallery (the middle location), it means he spends all six time-frames moving between the stage, dance hall, and music hall. If he was in the Stage during time-frame 2 and you find out that there are no suspects in the Dance hall in time-frame 3, then he must be in the Music Hall, and you would record this on your notepad.
Scenario one is the most straight forward and as such plays the fastest. Scenario three is the most complicated and has resulted in the most errant deductions in our group.
Final Thoughts:
If you like murder mysteries or deduction games, go out and buy Kronologic: Paris 1920. The variability of 15 games across the three scenarios appears to be a sufficient number of games to allow for re-playing games, as after six games I don’t recall who the killer was in the first game we played.
Turn order seems to matter more than I would like in a game, as the first player gets information sooner and can listen to the other people’s queries and infer some additional information. This is a bigger issue in the more straightforward games than in the harder scenario 3 games. We have tried serpentine turn order, but this was too big of a disadvantage to the first player. Search for Planet X remains my favorite deduction game as it solves the turn-order problem, but this is my new second-favorite deduction game.
Final Score: 4.5 Stars – Great Deduction game with good replay value, that’s easy to set up, easy to play, and with three scenarios feels like a different game each time that you play.
Hits:
• The three scenarios keep the game fresh as opposed to single scenario murder master games.
• The 15 games make it re-playable if you give enough time between games.
• Easy setup and easy rules make this game great for all groups and ages.
Misses:
• Turn order impacts the game more than it should.
• They could have kept the mechanics to the three scenarios, but came up with new stories for each game.
• The sequels are not coming out soon enough and the expansion does not appear to be available in English.
