Murder is in the air. Robots are murdering and raping humans. The world is a dark and scary place. The police or overworked and most are corrupt. But a group of Independent police known to the world as Jovans are on the case. Welcome to Murder City where crimes are solved for Money. Whether or not you get the right guy or gal doesn't matter because every one is guilty for something.


Theme:

I really like the theme of this game. It is a cyberpunk noir theme. There are not many games that use this theme, which is shame because it is a really cool one. The over all look and feel of the game matches the theme well. The gameplay also nicely match the theme. I will get into more details about these in a bit.

Bits:

The game comes with 5 cardboard player sheets, 25 Murder cards, 50 Legwork cards, 25 hardship cards and 165( I think I don't have the rules infront of me) of Evidence cards. The evidence cards are about 6 different decks ( think it was 5) which are Murder Weapon, Foresnics, Professional opinion (Which is spelled wrong on the back of the cards as Professional AOpinion but correctly spelled everywhere else), Eyewithness and interrogation. It also comes with 5 Metallic Colored Dice and a bunch of cards representing 1, 3 and 5 credits

Over all the cards in the game are pretty good. They are glossy with a nice feel to them. They don't feel very cheap and Shuffle nicely. Unfortunately, they are a bit too glossy and slide around alot causing it to get messy easily. The evidence and legwork cards are very small, and that can make them hard to shuffle especially if you don't have small hands like me. The Murder Cards and Hardship cards are of normal size and shuffle really well. The art on the Evidence cards are pretty much exactly the same on all the cards of the same type of evidence. There isn't much are and not a whole of text on the evidence, but it is fitting enough. The evidence cards also have different colors (with in the same deck) that match the colors of murder cards. I think that they could have put more unique art on each card but that would have most likely drawn up the cost of the game and you don't really pay much attention to the art since the cards only give you a little information.

The legwork cards and Hardships have no art on them and a lot of text to read. Some people might have problems with this, I for one don't and they text is also fun to read, especially the hardship ones. The back all the cards have a gritty, metal look to them and it fits nicely with the overall theme of the game.

The Murder cards do have some art on the front (mainly a victim) and text that tells you who was murdered, who the suspects are and what you need evidence wise to build a case. It is also color coded.

The overall art on the cards though minimal are effective and really feel like a gritty, futuristic Sci-fi, cyberpunk game or movie.

The player mats are made of cardboard and feel like nice heavy stock. The art on them are really good and they show your specific character. It also has slots for your murder and evidence cards, hardship cards and credits. The mat is pretty big and has text on it that talks about your character, their strengths, weaknesses and special abilities. The text (as another reviewer pointed out) can be a bit hard to read but non of use had too many problems.

Lastly the dice feel really light and cheap. The metallic look to them is quite nice but once you pick them up, you realize they are not that great, there is also not enough dice since you can be rolling up to 11 dice, not often mind you but you can end up rolling that many. The dice are the weakest part of the components. But I am sure like me, most gamers have lots of d6s that they can use instead.

Rules:

I want to quickly talk about the rules. The rule book is very heavily themed and not very well organized, so it seems daunting at first. But it is still fun to read. The flavor and themed text make it quite enjoyable to read and there are a lot of examples that help you fully understand how to play the game. Overall it is a better then average rule book but not great.

Mechanics

The Goal of the game is to have the most credits after 6 turns. There is no turn marker to help you keep track of how many turns you have done, which in my opinion was mistake on White Wolfs part. But it doesn't ruin the game, since there are many ways you can keep track of the turns (using a die, write it down, etc). You get credits by performing different actions during 2 phases, investigation and court. Every starts out with the same amount of credits and 3 evidence cards from specific decks based on your character and 3 murders. The murders are placed face up on your player mat while the evidence cards are held in your hand and are secret.

The first thing you do is determine turn order by rolling the dice, to see who goes first. Then you draw a legwork card at the begging of your turn. The legwork card are cards that help you or hinder your opponents, which you keep and use at the appropriate time. Within legwork cards there are setback cards that get played immediately and effect everyone. These are usually events that hurt everyone. If you get one, read the text out loud apply the effects and keep drawing from the legwork deck until you get a legwork card.

Once you get that the Investigation phase begins. At the beginning of this phase you draw 2 evidence cards from any deck that you want. Don't forget to check you weakness and pay 1 credit if you take a card from that deck. You can draw two face down cards or one face down and one from the discard of an evidence deck that your strength allows (or one that a legwork card allows you to do). You can also take a hardship card to draw an additional card from a deck. Hardship cards are usually bad and effect only you, these can prevent you from being able to participate in phase to doing an action you are drawing it for. There few other actions you draw a hardship card for like to get 2 legwork cards, to audit someones cases (will explain this during court phase) and a few others. These represent spending too much time working and not enough living life, and really fit well with the theme of the game. You can only ever get 1 so if you are about to do an action that will give you another, you don't get one, nor can you willing try to take one do an action (such as draw 2 legwork cards) if you already drew one willingly or as a result of a card.

During the investigation phase you can barter for cards, you say what you want and the other players can trade with you for cards, money or favors, such as endorsing their case at a later turn. You always have to tell the truth about a card but don't have to reveal how many dice are involved (will explain this more in court phase). Then you place the cards you have face down onto the murders that require those cards, you don't have to match the colors of the evidence cards with the murder cards to put them down on it, but (unless you are willing to take a hardship you can't rearrange the evidence cards). Why the colors matter I will explain in court phase. Your hands size doesn't matter but if you have more then 5 evidence cards in hand you can't take a case to court. If you don't have more then 5 evidence cards and you have a case that has 3 evidence cards face down on it, it has to be brought to court otherwise if it has less then 3 pieces of evidence it is optional to take a case to court. Also if you have evidence that is not listed on a murder or you have one that is a duplicate of another evidence type on the same murder (2 murder weapons) you can't take it to court either. But since you can only take one case to court per a turn this is actually a good rule that prevents players from waiting to take 3 cases to court or from forgetting to take a case and therefore screwing themselves over. When that is done you get 1 credit for each piece of evidence you placed on a murder.

The player to the current players left begins their turn and investigation phase. Once everyone has had a turn, the court phase begins. At this point the first player declares what case, if any, they are taking to court. The player to their left (or someone who has taken hardship) is their auditor, if they can't audit the case then it automatically gets taken to court. As an auditor you get paid 1 credit right away for auditing the case. The players whose turn it is, explains the case (yes you tell a story) about who did it, using the flavor text off their evidence cards, but do not reveal the evidence cards. You have to use the text into your story, so if it says the weapon was a knife, add a knife to your story. Once the case has been heard the auditor has 3 options, challenge, endorse or allow. If you challenge, you pick a piece of evidence if it is not the same color of the murder card, the case is thrown out completely (and I think the auditor gets 2 addition credits for doing a good job). If it matches, the auditor has to play 1 credit for each piece of evidence that was a different color in that case. If they allow it to go through, then nothing happens to the auditor. If the auditor endorses the case, the player gets to take his case to trial and gets an extra die. If the crime gets murder one, the auditor gets an additional 2 credits but if it fails to get any conviction, then the auditor must take a hardship if they haven't already earlier.

The auditoring (not sure this is a word) of cases is the meat and potatoes of the game. This is where the game can be really fun and where the players try their best to bluff their opponents. I really like this mechanic and it really adds a lot to the game based on the stories that get told.

If it makes it to trial, you flip over the cards and look at the number at the bottom of the evidence cards, it ranges from 1 to 3, you add up those numbers and take that many dice, you also add any extra dice you got from a special ability, endorsements or legwork card and roll the dice. Check the number on the murder card with what you rolled, the number to the left of the / indicates the roll amount that it needs to be equal to or great than and the number to the right is how many credits for that conviction you get. If you fail to even match the Aggravated assault roll then you failed to gain a conviction. Once you are done you discard your murder card and all the evidence attached to it. You can't draw a new murder card until the investigation phase of your next turn. Now it goes to the player on your left and once all players have had a chance to take cases to trail, the new turn begins. And you beginning again with the first turn die roll until you have had 6 turns. Then at the end of the game you count up credits and the player with the highest wins.

Conclusion:
Overall I really enjoyed this game. It is a light and simple game that has a lot of strategy. When you draw evidence cards, if you wait till you get all of the same color, you will most likely not be able to take a case to trial for a while or at all. Auditing the cases and bluffing your way to and endorsement is a huge part of the game and the most challenging. There are may times you pick the 1 piece of evidence (when challenging a case) that is the correct one and then have to pay 2 credits for the ones you didn't pick. This makes it really hard to challenge cases and you end up endorsing more cases. Also building a strong case (or getting one with a lot of dice) can be very tricky and hard. But these are all realistic situations, especially within the theme of the game. It is also a good idea to change up your strategy, always bring good cases to court or bad ones makes you predictable and allowing other players to gain money from you rather then lose money. If you like Cyberpunk themes and like bluffing and/or storytelling games this game is for you. If you don't like to tell stories or the theme stay away. Also remember this is a strategy game not a dice rolling/regular card game. It is all about bluffing and taking risks in challenging cases. If you can challenge a case successfully, it allows you to profit and your opponent to lose out on a potentially big payoff. The game is about getting a conviction by any means necessary, so if you play the game with that in mind you will enjoy it a lot.

Over all I give it a 9/10 a simple and fun game that involves telling stories and I love storytelling games.