Designer: Evan Derrick (Dark Moon, Detective: City of Angels)

Artist: Vincent Dutrait (Broom Service, Dead Man’s Draw, Diplomacy, Discoveries: The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Elysium, Jaipur, Lewis & Clark, Lost Cities, Lovecraft Letter, Medici, Mythic Battles: Pantheon, New York: 1901, Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Rise of the Runelords – Base Set, Raptor, Rise of Augustus, Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island, Treasure Island, When I Dream, Wyatt Earp)

Publisher: Van Ryder Games (Detective: City of Angels, Hostage Negotiator, Saloon Tycoon)

Genre/Mechanisms: action point allowance system, area movement, cooperative play, time track

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Detective: City of Angels and New Expansion! is already fully-funded.  In fact, pledges currently total almost 4.5x the initial funding goal with 6 days left to go on the campaign.

Player Count: 1-5

Solo Mode: yes

Complexity: medium-light

Risk: medium-low

What It’s About:  Detective: City of Angels is a scenario/case-based detective game where one player takes the Dungeon Master-like role of The Chisel and the other players compete to solve the case. The newest expansion, Smoke & Mirrors adds 4 more cases/scenarios.

How It Works: Detective: City of Angels is a scenario-based competitive and story-driven game. The base game includes 9 cases, and each of the expansions includes 4 more. Players compete to solve the case in a given scenario, but the case and solution don’t change, so once a player has played through a case as a competing detective, they can’t really replay it… except in the role of The Chisel. While it’s true that the game can be played solo or with a group using Sleuth Mode, creating an AI version of The Chisel using the Sleuth Book, it’s more fun for the players when someone actively plays the Dungeon Master-like role of The Chisel and directly controls some of the actions, responses, and story developments. Also, in Head-to-Head mode, players have the option of playing cooperatively against the Chisel, opting to work together to solve the case.

In the regular competitive version of the game including The Chisel called Classic Mode, gameplay is as follows. Cases last a certain number of days, depending on the case. Each day, each player takes a total of four actions, one at at time in player order. Actions include: Moving, Searching a Location, Searching a Suspect, Questioning a Suspect, Analyzing, and Taking a Kickback. As Detectives discover new Case Cards during their investigations, they alone gain access to the new information. Sometimes that information may even include the identity of a new Suspect. Mystery Cards may also be discovered in a search, which can provide special rules or mechanisms. Players can bribe Snitches after they’ve been questioned by other players to retrieve at least one piece of the Snitch’s passed-along information. And if a Detective questions The Chisel’s responses, he may gain or lose Leverage depending on whether or not The Chisel was holding out on him. Leverage can later be used to back The Chisel into a corner, or for The Chisel to obstruct some of a Detective’s actions of questionings.

The game ends when a player uses their Solve Token to correctly reveal the Suspect, Weapon, and Motive. If no player has correctly discerned the trio by the end of the Final Day, players are allowed a final guess each. If still no one has correctly identified all three answers, The Chisel wins the game.

Comparisons:  It plays a bit like Clue, but with more narrative story and deeper theming. But there’s more to do around the board than in that old chestnut, adding some of the complexity of the Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective games with a bit of a dudes-on-a-map, multiplayer sandbox. And of course, the role of The Chisel expands the storytelling and player choices Dungeon & Dragons-style.

While there are several scenario-based, noir-ish detective games out there, from Deadline to Chronicles of Crime to Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, they’re all cooperative. Detective: City of Angels is the only entry in the genre that’s also a competitive experience, and in many ways makes for an interesting pairing with Time of Legends: Destinies, currently receiving a lot of attention on Kickstarter right now for being a story-driven, RPG-like board game while also being uniquely competitive in its genre.

What Should I Pledge?:
$35 Sleuth: the new Smoke & Mirrors expansion, with all stretch goals.
$70 Flatfoot: everything in the Sleuth pledge, plus the Bullets Over Hollywood expansion.
$79 Copper: just the base game, Detective: City of Angels KS Edition.
$109 Snooper: Copper + Sleuth.
$139 Wise Head: Copper + Flatfoot.

Add-Ons:
$20 Artbook
$15 Chisel Screen
$10 Extra Pad of 50 double-sided Investigation Sheets.
$3 Secret Cabal Promos
$3 Gen Con Promos

KS Exclusives:
None.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S. you’re looking at $139 for the Wise Head pledge, $15 for the Chisel Screen, $6 for the two sets of Promos, and $16 for one-wave shipping, for a total of $176.

Detective: City of Angels and New Expansion! completes its Kickstarter on Tuesday, October 8th and tentatively ships in June 2020.