PLAYED FOR YOU

Die drei ???

und der Feuerdiamant

With the new series play it smart Kosmos introduced games that can be played with or without an app for a smart device. One of those games is, based on Die drei ???, the three friends need to go detecting again:

A disappeared commissioner, fires and blackmail - all players try to cooperatively solve criminal cases. A turn comprises dice rolling and then dealing with 1) Danger, 2) Movement, 3) Action with clues, interrogation, helpers and obstacles and 4) detective cards. Players win together when they find the culprit before on of the markers on the four danger tracks reaches last position. When this happens or when the wrong suspect is accused, all lose together. A detailed description of the mechanism would be too much here, so let me only say that you can choose the level of difficulty and need a bit of luck in rolling dice and urgently need detective cards from successful interrogations, which are correct combinations of clues and suspects, to succeed in solving the cases.

The rules recommend that you familiarize yourself with difficulty levels and possibilities of the game without app, before using the app, which rolls dice for you and assists, but does not supervise if you stick to the rules, this still rests with players. In order to win with the app, you must solve all four cases.

A success as to topic, rather chance-driven and repetitive as to mechanisms; sounds, additional rules and surprises in the app surely upgrade the game, but it is at least as much fun without it. A little gaming experience is definitely helpful. Card scanning is rather tedious, so I prefer to roll dice and to read the cards.

Players: 2-4

Age: 8+

Time: 60+

Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artist: Silvia Christoph, Bernd Wagenfeld

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Kosmos 2013

Web: www.kosmos.de

Genre: Crime, deduction,

Users: For families

Version: de

Rules: de

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Favorite topic

Standard mechanisms, nicely mixed

Lots of dice rolling and chance

App does the administration and introduces additional effects

App for apple devices only

Compares to:

All versions of Die drei ???, all games using apps

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 2

Communication (red): 3

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0