The other game I will review here is one of the two that I was most interested in seeing at PAX U: Here Lies. A friend was kind enough to introduce me to Jono from D.V.C Games in advance of the convention, and we made sure to schedule time to visit with them at their booth. There were so many unique and well-designed small box games in their collection! If you have been following some of the good press they have been getting, you know that the design collective known as Jasper Beatrix is doing some truly amazing things.

Visiting with them and seeing games like Pacts, Corvids, and the upcoming Inkwell and Rosetta (2nd ed.) was a highlight of the con for me. And Here Lies, designed by Jasper Beatrix, Jakob Maier, and Bobby West, is the game of theirs I was most excited to bring home and play.

We finally played the first two cases on New Year’s Day, and the wait was well worth it.

As I said above at the start of this blog post, this game is a mystery-themed co-op that feels like a best of both worlds combination of Mysterium and Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. OK, so it does not have the lovely and trippy artwork of Mysterium’s cards, but what it does have is the best design mechanic from that game: the idea of one person knowing the story and having to give creative clues to the team in restricted ways. Instead of it being a ghost who is helping you solve the mystery, the gist of the game is that the best detectives of the age meet to challenge and entertain each other with the crimes they have solved in the past. “My fellow detectives supreme… Can you solve the riddles the same way I did?”

Each case you try to solve in Here Lies also has the stripped down feeling of what you get in Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective. I mean that in the best way possible. There are categories of things you need to figure out in each case, such as cause, weapon, a location of importance, an activity that was relevant to the crime, etc. And each case has a very brief introduction that is read to the investigators playing as a team. All of these things are in the casebook, and the player reading it is the lead investigator (think of the ghost in Mysterium). They know what they need to communicate to the other players in cryptic, incomplete, but creative clues.

But what Here Lies sheds from Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective are all the red herrings, the lengthy exposition, the hunting around a map, and the insufferable, unbeatable Holmes who does it better than you even if you do manage to untangle the web of evidence. All that stuff was maybe 1/3 fun and 2/3 frustrating. Here Lies also has a round structure that keeps the game moving toward a satisfying ending instead of having a myriad of rabbit holes seducing the players into dead-ends of wasted game time.

How does it work? Here is the gist…

The lead investigator reads the intro to the team of investigators. In each round after that, the lead investigator will add one piece of key evidence for the investigators to consider. The investigators will then enter the inquiry phase where they will use cards drawn from their individual decks to ask creative questions of the lead investigator. Responses will typically come in answers written by the lead investigator using a dry erase marker. These can include drawings, wordplay, and other creatively limited clues. Using each card costs a certain amount of “time” that tracks your progress through the rounds of play, so you cannot do it all. You have to hone in and focus as a group on what will help most. Quite a clever design and there is a lot of open-ended, interactive fun to be had in playing it!

The investigators are encouraged to talk out loud about their theories regarding what each piece of evidence might mean or their hypotheses about the possible answers to the required categories. Throughout it all, the lead investigator is listening and mentally tracking the progress of the group. At that end of the inquiry phase when the team has used up their time, there follows a Case Check phase. During this part of the game, the lead investigator gives silent feedback on each category that needs to be solved. A green check means someone said the underlined word or concept to solve that piece of the puzzle. (You do not know precisely what you said that nailed it, but you know it is been said. Keeps you thinking!) A yellow stick means the group talk has made some progress toward that section of the mystery. And what you do not want to see is the red X that means your team has done nothing fruitful to solve this section of the case.

If at any point the group says all of the key category words from the case in one go, immediate victory is declared. But if you get through all the rounds without a correct solution, someone steps forward to take a final shot at the big dramatic revelation that wraps up every Poirot, Miss Marple, or Sherlock Holmes story. The theme really comes through here.

We played the first two starter scenarios. They were fairly easy to solve, but think of them as tutorial cases. You are learning how to play the game. As you scale up your skills, I think the game ratchets up the difficulty as well. Here Lies can be played as an ongoing campaign and I believe there are additional cases available on the D.V.C Game website that you can enjoy once you have completed the casebook. There is a lot of great gaming here in a box that is only about 6 x 4 x 2 inches in size!

I can see our game groups coming together and beginning game night with another Here Lies case to kick things off. Here we are once again… A group of detectives reuniting to relive our past gaming glories. Can we bring the band together again and figure out a tense case? Do we still have the goods to outwit the criminals and fit together the pieces of the puzzle? Here Lies will be a staple in my game groups going forward.

Stay tuned for more game reviews here in the near future. To tease coming attractions, there may be upcoming blog posts on A Place for All My Books from Smirk and Dagger and Winter Rabbit from Absurdist Productions. See you online!