I anxiously awaited this game from Robot Martini as soon as I heard about it. I love Kory Heath's streamlined games and the thought of a werewolf-like game for less than 8 players has always intrigued me. I ordered my copy of Criminals as soon as I saw it was available. I was happy to see it in the mailbox three days later.

After reading the rules I found the game to be much like I expected. The rules are simple. They fit on one side of a sheet of paper. I knew the fun for me would be in trying them out. At the same time, though, I also knew some of my friends prefer games to be more direct. At first glance the actions and objectives seem related in a non-intuitive way. I trust Kory and the crew at Robot Martini enough to keep looking for the fun by playing through a few times. Not everyone I game with approaches games that way though.

As it turned out, my fears were dead on. We started with a five-player game and I was the only one who was enjoying it. Like in Werewolf, there's the problem of coming up with a good reason of why you didn't commit the crime. You can role-play and make up a fictious alibi of why you couldn't possibly have done it, but will that thwart the accusations of your opponents (especially those who won't pretend and just want to end the game)? If there's any problem I see with the system itself it's that it costs nothing to accuse (sell out) someone incorrectly. Therefore, players who don't care to read their opponents can start pointing immediately and just rush through the game. Seeing all this come out in our game, after our first time through no one wanted to touch it again.

Of course, I wasn't so quick to give up on the game. Even at only $4.50 I'm not about to shelve it after one play. Hours later, after several other games, I begged them to try it again. This time we had six players. I told them we needed to get into the bluffing and we needed to question players more, looking for them to crack a smile or otherwise give themselves away.

It turned out the second game went a lot better. There were more laughs and more a lot more attempts to read each other. They liked it so much I had no problem getting them to immediately try it a third time. By then, players were definitely playing to win.

I'm sure I was the only one at the table who fully understood every way to win or lose, but they had the general idea and they knew that, if incorrectly sold out, a player had the chance to win by fingering the player (or boss) guilty of the crime. That was obviously enough to keep them playing.

In both of the first two games I went out very fast by fingering the wrong person after being falsely accused myself. I couldn't resist the possibility of winning by guessing a player's crime early. Obviously it's harder than I expected and I spent most of those games just running it for the others who were more cautious.

In the third game I played it safe and bluffed my way through one near accusation. That fun alone really made the game for me.

In none of these games did we ever sell out or finger the Crime Boss. I look forward to exploring that possibility more as we bring this out in the future.

The fact that there's no real penalty for selling someone out incorrectly (especially for the first half of the game, so it seems) still made for some random pointing at the beginning. It's also hard to tell what to do when two players simultaneously (or nearly so) are pointed at by half of the players. Considering the laughs we had and the second guessing that was going on, I feel it proved itself as a game that will be enjoyed by a group that's willing to warm up to it.