Masters of Crime: Shadows

A different approach to the classic murder mystery and still a fun way to spend an evening

OK.

Birthday gift for our son. He’s been wanting to add to his collection

Very well thought out game. Best of this type I’ve played yet.

Shadows is brilliant! One of the best games of the Escape-room one shot puzzles I ever played! I've played a lot of the Exit boxes. This one is definitely a hidden gem. Easy to follow the instructions, for $7 you can get this amazing immersive experience! totally worth it!

excellent game

This is a fun game if you are entertaining and you need something to keep the evening going! You just need to study the material a little bit more before playing so you don't waste too much time setting up. I don't have any pictures but when we played this we have a lot of fun!

This is a fresh take on tabletop story-driven gaming. Different from the everpresent Exit boxes, this game instead presents you with a set of sealed envelopes and a deck of cards - but don't be fooled, as the simplicity of the materials masks a surprising amount of gameplay complexity. Each of the 72 numbered cards includes quite a bit of prose describing the story of the game and laying out decisions for you to make, which result in drawing different other cards, opening envelopes, etc. A "heist board" is also provided to track your progress. Along the way, some outside knowledge is required, and these areas are indicated with a "web research" icon to ensure you know when the game is asking you to use other resources, which is appreciated. This is a substantial time and effort commitment - you'll want to set aside a full afternoon or evening for this, and you'll want a group of folks who don't mind reading cards aloud or passing them around, then strategizing and debating about your next move. In a way, the gameplay has some parallels to a tabletop RPG campaign - this definitely goes beyond the Exit boxes' "guess what the creators were thinking". There's a companion web site used at various points during the game as well. A nice feature from that site is that you can reset the game to play again - well, sort of. Downloadable copies of the few artifacts that invite you to write on them are available, but they're in German only, so you might want to make photocopies of anything you're tempted to write on before playing. But there's nothing fundamentally destructive about the gameplay. This isn't an experience for casual gamers, but for someone who really loves text adventures or choose-your-own-adventure role playing and who wants an optimization challenge centered around pulling off a complex heist, this is an intriguing new take on the boxed adventure genre!