Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: The Thames Murders & Other Cases

“Coming out as a collaborative board game lover. My roommate and I used to play this with an intensity I can only describe as inappropriate. Once in a public cafe; I can’t imagine what people thought. Shockingly hard, so fun if you like mystery stuff. Would probably be good for older kids if they like reading/being a huge nerd.”

“A brilliant collaborative deduction game, where you try to solve a mystery in fewer moves than Holmes. You can play it solo, but it scales nicely to small and medium groups. My favorite game design trick is the directory of all the places you can go to investigate. It has entries relevant to multiple cases, plus tons of distractors. What this means is that as you're investigating one case, you might notice an entry (e.g. "gunsmiths") that inspires you in another case entirely. My favorite mystery-lover trick is how the cases build on different patterns that you'll recognize, like breaking someone's alibi or narrowing down who could have done it based on travel times. I recommend the re-releases rather than the 1982 original, unless you are a collector. Otherwise, there's no bad place to start!”