This is a series of posts where I play 100 boardgames.
Game: Murdle
Designer: Rob Grom & Dexter Stevens
Year: 2024
Country: U.S.A.
Publisher: Endless Games
Murdle (published as Murha! in Finland) is a simple deduction game based on the online mysteries and novels by G.T. Karber. It has a goofy, retro aesthetic of detectives, spies and rocket-propelled pants. For each game, a new mystery is randomized based on three core clues, as well as whether a suspect is guilty or not. The clues are the suspect, the murder weapon and the location.
The players compete who figures out the mystery first. They have to share clues, but only as little as possible. There’s a simple grid which allows you to triangulate which clues are connected to each other. Once you have a case, you can make an accusation by presenting your theory of the correct suspect, weapon and location. If you’re correct, you win. If not, your opponents keep putting together the clues.
Each player has a little screen to hide their scorecard on which the triangulation of clues is done. There’s also a public board onto which players reveal the clues they are forced to give to the others.
And a single game is supposed to taker 20 – 30 min… and it does. Murdle feels like the tic-tac-toe of deduction games in that it’s so simple, it runs very fast.