Calling all creative detectives for Detective Club!
How good are your detective skills?
No, not like CSI skills. But rather, your powers of detecting the bluffer among you?
Detective Club, by Blue Orange Games, gives you a chance to find out!
When I look over the list of board games we’ve reviewed over the last 10 years, Blue Orange Games is second on the list of game publishers in quantity of our game reviews.
And there’s a very good reason for that — Blue Orange Games publishes fantastic board games for families!
We’re happy to report that Detective Club continues with that tradition.
How to play Detective Club
The objective in Detective Club is to gain the most points. The game is played over a number of rounds where players take turns being the Informer. And points are awarded each round depending on each player’s role.
To begin, each player chooses a color and takes the matching Player Marker and Voting Token (wooden magnifying glass) and draws 6 Evidence cards for their starting hand.
One player is chosen to be the first Informer and they get the pencil and all the notepads.
The Informer reviews their hand of 6 Evidence cards and chooses a word that can be represented by 2 of their cards. They then place one of those cards face up in the middle of the table.
The Informer then secretly writes the word they thought of on all of the notepads except one. They shuffle all the notepads and then deal them out to the other players. Players who receive a notepad with a word are Detectives. The player who receives the notepad without a word clue is the Conspirator. However, this is also kept secret – since the goal for the Detectives is to figure out who the Conspirator is.
Next, the player to the left of the Informer chooses one card from their hand to play face up in front of their Player Marker. The card they choose should match the word on the notepad they received. If the player is the Conspirator, they won’t know what the word is they’re trying to match. So, they’ll need to choose a card they think will work, based on the cards they’ve seen played by other players.
Once all players have played one card, the Informer plays their second card and the other players do likewise.
After everyone has played 2 cards, the Informer says their word and explains why the 2 cards they played indicate that word. Then each player takes turns, starting to the Informer’s left, explaining why their 2 cards also match the word.
Then players vote on who they think the Conspirator is by placing their Voting token on that player’s Player Marker.
Once everyone (except the Informer) has placed their Voting Token, all players reveal their notepads and discover who the real Conspirator is.
Each Detective who correctly voted on the Conspirator gets 3 points.
If the Conspirator received 0 or 1 voting tokens, the Conspirator gets 5 points and the Informer gets 4 points.
If the Conspirator received 2 or more voting tokens, the Conspirator and Informer don’t get any points.
Once the scoring is complete, the person to the left of the Informer becomes the new Informer for the next round. The new Informer crosses out the words used in the previous round and begins a new round.
After each player has been the Informer once (6-8 players) or twice (less than 6 players), the game ends. Players total up their points and the player with the most points is the winner!
Can the whole family enjoy Detective Club?
With its whimsical artwork and simple game play, Detective Club is a terrific game for families to play together.
The recommended age on the game box is 8+ and we feel like that’s a pretty accurate gauge. Mainly because players must be able to read and write. When players are handed a notepad with a word on it, they’ll need to be able to read and understand that word on their own. And when they’re the Informer, they’ll need to come up with a word and write it on the notepads to hand to everyone else.
So if your young family members can handle that aspect of the game, they’ll be able to join in the fun.
We’ve heard it said that Detective Club is what you get if Dixit and Spyfall had a baby.
And we can see why people have thought of it that way.
The most obvious comparison is to Dixit because of the amazing artwork on the cards. All 168 Evidence cards are extremely unique and engaging.
The colorful imagery on every card opens immense possibilities of what you can pull out of it.
And we can also see the comparison to Spyfall because players are trying to determine the person among the group who doesn’t know the answer.
But rather than questioning each other and coming up with vague verbal answers to show that you know the answer, in Detective Club players just set out cards.
So yes, it’s a bluffing game, but it’s on the very light side.
The Conspirator in Detective Club is just trying to get away with adding cards that could pass inspection. And the Conspirator doesn’t have to guess what the word actually is. They just have to make it look like their cards fit the group.
Those of you who have seen or read a number of our game reviews may know that mom doesn’t like bluffing games.
She doesn’t like to lie about anything. And games are no exception.
So proposing she play a game that includes bluffing, is a tricky proposition. However, the rules in Detective Club include a variant where players don’t take turns explaining why their cards match the word chosen by the Informer.
After all players have played their 2 cards and the Informer reveals the word. Rather than taking turns for players to justify their chosen cards to match that word, players simply vote based on what they see.
This means the Detectives (who do know the word) don’t get a chance to explain what part of their chosen pictures match the word. But it also means that the Conspirator doesn’t have to lie about why their chosen cards match the word (that they had no clue of before it was revealed).
It makes the voting a bit trickier this way, but it also doesn’t pressure players to lie when they’re the Conspirator.
After all, the pressure is on the Conspirator anyway throughout the game.
And it’s especially tricky for the Conspirator when they’re left of the Informer. Because they’ll only have one card to get ideas from before they need to place a card to play their first card. If the Conspirator plays last in a round, they’ll have seen more cards played before they have to choose a card to play.
Yet with how whimsical and varied the artwork is on every card, the Detectives will have a challenge as well determining which player may only be guessing on what the word is.
And those choices make for an interesting game throughout — regardless of which role you’re dealt each round.
Plus up to 8 players can play!
Way to go again Blue Orange Games in publishing another fun game for families!
How does Detective Club score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?
Detective Club scores high on our “let’s play again” game meter for a number of reasons.
It’s a simple game to play but with engaging choices. It also lets our creative juices flow in both trying to come up with a word when we’re the Informer and finding hints within our cards that match the given word when we’re a Detective.
Yet we also enjoy the challenge when we’re the Conspirator of trying to choose cards from our hand that resemble the cards played before — to see if we can get away undetected.
Are you ready to test your detective skills with Detective Club?
We’d like to thank Blue Orange Games for a review copy of Detective Club.
