MicroMacro: Crime City Game Review

Mechanics: Mystery, Deduction, Map Study

Game difficulty: easy

Game duration: 20 min

Number of players: 1-4

Best number of players: 2

Language: the game is available in Latvian

This is one of the more difficult reviews because, even after playing through all 16 scenarios, I'm not sure how much MicroMacro: Crime City is a game and how much it's a unique game design adventure with a huge story map. However, winning the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award speaks for itself and the uniqueness of MicroMacro: City of Crime deserves the attention that this game has received.

Subject matter

The game is about a town with animals and all kinds of monsters, which turns out to be a terrible place to live, because crimes are happening around every corner. Players have missions of varying difficulty, each with a crime to solve. The first one starts with a missing hat, but the last one already has several suspects in the carnival and a lot more work for the detectives.

Components

The game consists of a huge black and white map, which, be warned, might be a problem for many players to fully lay out on the gaming tables. Each scenario has 6-10 cards that ask questions that must be answered on the card to solve the mystery. The game also comes with a simple magnifying glass, which seemed like both a nice gesture and a useless tool, since exploring such a small area makes the game significantly longer.

It's funny that the son, seeing the game, asked why the card was not colored. But it has to be black and white, otherwise it would be too colorful and much easier to solve.

In my opinion, the game would have benefited from some transparent, colored plastic markers that would allow you to better mark found objects and follow, for example, the suspect's path. But it remains an untapped opportunity.

Mechanics

From the outside, MicroMacro: Crime City looks like a game where adults are concentrating hard to find something on the map, and then suddenly the room is filled with cheers. That's exactly what happens in the game. You are given directions where to look for the first clue, you find it, then reveal the card and look at the second clue and so on until the case is solved.

You can try the demo version of the game online for yourself here .

Pay! Several people who have tried the demo have told me that the game seems too simple and they don't understand why it is so highly rated. The demo really provides an incomplete experience.

“MicroMacro: Crime City” is unique in two ways.

• It has absolutely genius time travel. Namely, the large city map is divided into different periods of time, it is not static. If a character is at a drink stand, then the same character can be seen further on a bench, and even further in the park you see a character being kidnapped and dragged into a car. And the whole map consists of the lives of all these little people. My mouth still drops when I see how time travel is portrayed in this game. I have never seen anything like this before and I think the idea is truly revolutionary!
• It's a campaign game without a campaign. In theory, each scenario is playable on its own, but you can really enjoy the game by digging into it. Playing several missions, you start to recognize the characters, follow their progress, you get feelings like "I've seen you somewhere" or "Ah, who doesn't know that the tool shop is near Neptune Park". Getting to know this city was the best experience of the game. In time, the town from the court comes alive!

Multiplayer

No need to, when I played my copy of MicroMacro: City of Crime, I happily passed it on and now I'm waiting for feedback. The price of the game is quite affordable and the 16 missions will take several evenings to play through. Oftentimes, multiplayer destroys a good story and the joy of making this a one-off experience.

A total of 4 parts are planned for the game "MicroMacro" and at the end they can all be combined into an even bigger detective adventure.

Rating

After many years, MicroMacro: City of Crime is a game that truly deserved to win the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award. It is innovative, different from thousands of other games and at the same time very accessible to everyone. But I think there is something here, like many Oscar-winning films, that are unique, but not necessarily to everyone's liking.

I consider MicroMacro: City of Crime to be a brilliant experiment in timing, storytelling and environment creation in the world of modern board games - a work of art, I'd even say, and I give it a 9 out of 10 . But if we judge it as a mechanical game, then the rating is 7 out of 10. There are many games with better stories or more engaging mechanics where you have to make more meaningful decisions, and if I were to meet someone who is not that deep into the game world, I would definitely recommend start with something else.

Author of the article: Kristaps Auzāns