Suspects is a detective game where players will take on the role of detective Claire Harper. Presented in the style of Agatha Christie’s novels, you’ll solve three unique cases using you

deductive reasoning skills.

The game is played on numbered cards. You are given a single card and a handful of documents to begin along with the questions you will have to answer at the end of the game. 

The direction you take in your investigation is entirely up to you. The beginning cards give you a list of suspects you can question or locations you can visit to search for clues and gather information. Each time you make a decision, more cards become available for you to flip over and assess.

You’ll pause the game after you have flipped 30 cards to attempt to answer the final questions. Again after 45 cards, and then once more before the final reveal. You score points based on when you correctly answered the case questions in your investigation. 

What Do We Think of Suspects?

As detective game connoisseurs, we found Suspects to be a lot of fun to play through.

The cards are nicely illustrated and do not have any questionable or gory content on them. While we chose not to play this with our children, I did not worry about them walking into the room while we were doing so. There is no blood (or if there was it was so little I can’t remember,) and any victim that has met an unfortunate end is only referenced, not shown in the illustrations. (Outside of suggested death with feet visible.)

The point scoring system is great and allows for players to play through together but make their own guesses, if they so wish or cannot agree, and end with different scores. I usually find detective games to be best suited for 1 or 2 players maximum and that is no different with Suspects. You can play with however many you wish, but beyond two, there isn’t enough content for players to feel like they have something to do. You’ll end up with at least one person watching it all happen.

Card Based Detective Work

Card based or highly narrative detective games where you do not destroy or alter the pieces in any way run the risk of growing stale and suspects does have a little bit of this. There isn’t too many “Wow! I did not see that coming,” as there can be in other detective/mystery games like the Exit the Game series. (This one in that series is phenomenal.) That said, Suspects doesn’t overstay its welcome and I was genuinely excited to experience each case. Three cases is the perfect amount to live in Claire Harper’s world and feels achievable to finish without being overwhelming like other narrative driven games such as Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective can be for some players.

In other card based detective games like Unlock, I don’t typically feel the pull to read through all the cards we didn’t use. With Suspects, I was genuinely interested in reading everything each character had to say, even if we didn’t feel the need to question them in our investigation. 

Summary

Suspects is an enjoyable and well written detective game. It is as fun to try and solve the mysteries as it is to just read through the stories. The cases are in the light to medium difficulty range and all seem solvable, though challenging enough that you probably won’t get everything right. 

Without spoiling the content of the cases, they all deal with murder, death. While there is no gore in the game, I recommend parents play through the cases first to determine appropriateness for their children. Due to the levels of reading required and sensitive content throughout, I wouldn’t recommend playing with children younger than 13. 

You might enjoy Suspects if you:

• Enjoy narrative driven games.
• Love searching for clues and solving puzzles.
• Want a unique game to play solo or with a buddy.
• Want a detective game that isn’t destroyed during play and can be gifted or resold after you’ve played through.

You might not enjoy Suspects if you:

• Want a game to play with a group of 3 or more
• Prefer manipulating components over the mental and verbal processing of text.

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Game Info:
Title: Suspects
Designer: Sebastien Duverger Nedellec, Paul Halter, Guillaume Montiage
Artist: Emile Denis
Publisher: Studio H

A special thank you to our friends at Hachette games for sending a copy of Suspects for review. As always our thoughts and opinions are our own.

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