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Welcome to Crime City. It’s a place of murder, mayhem and, most importantly, mysteries. MicroMacro: Crime City is a delightful romp through crime-infested streets and YOU, the investigator, have been charged with solving those misdeeds.
Accessibility Summary
- The instructions are clear and well formatted.
- Each case is quite short.
- You may struggle if you have vision or sensory processing issues.
- Memorising the locations involved in a case can be difficult, but there is a solution!*
Solving the Mysteries
The game centres around following clues on the cards for each of the 16 cases (plus an extra hidden on the box) to solve a crime. No spoilers: cards usually contain questions like:
- Where is the hat?
- Where did the victim live?
- Where are the perpetrators now?
Think Where’s Wally for adults. The questions aren’t complicated, but finding the solutions is a fun challenge.
The cases themselves range from lost hats to murder. The game is suitable for ages 12+, but the start card for each case indicates the severity of the crime involved, acting like a basic trigger warning so you can decide what works for you and your players.
It’s part 1 of 4 games (plus a bonus box that combines the previous four games) and can be played by 1 to 4 players. You’ll need a large surface – a wall, table, or a hard floor, and bright lighting.
You really can play this game solo, but it’s fun with more players too! I did the first few cases solo and later cases with other people, and I couldn’t tell you which I preferred. It’s all down to your personal choice and your friends’ availability!
Getting Set Up
Setup is really straightforward – all you need to do is:
- Put a sticker on your magnifying glass.
- Put some cards into cute little envelopes.
You could probably do it in 5 minutes, but I accidentally had the TV on, so it took an hour.
The components are of average quality. I had the map on the carpet to begin with, and it tore in seconds. You definitely need a hard surface for it, but the artwork is amazing. A bigger magnifying glass would have been great, but as it’s entirely useable as it is. The packaging is nice, but the box could easily have been smaller, though the cat enjoyed it!
Playing the Game
The map shows the city as a place, but also represents the events happening in time. So, you might find a character at the scene of the crime and be able to track their movements forwards and backwards through their story.
You work your way through these stories in short bursts of play from 15 to 45 minutes per case. If you go by the information on to the box that is. Your play time per case is likely to differ based on concentration levels, energy, and so on.
When you’re done with a case, simply move on to the next!
The Cases
The introductory case is nice and simple. It eases you into the game and is contained within a small area of the map. It’s a lighthearted case, as crimes go, and shouldn’t cause any trouble to solve.
Later cases get tougher and longer, and many have more than the 5 cards you get for the first few crimes. As you bring down MicroMacro: Crime City’s underbelly, you might find that the tougher cases are great because you can really get your teeth into them.
More About Accessibility
The Slightly Longer Version
If you have problems with eyesight or sensory processing issues, you might find this game quite hard. The map is very detailed, large, and the things you need to find are typically half a centimetre to 2 centimetres in size. It’s entirely black and white. The text on the case cards is also quite small, which is also potentially problematic if you have vision problems.
*The solution promised above: because I struggle with the typical ADHD memory and processing issues, I used tiny arrow-shaped post-it notes to keep track of what we’d found at strategic points. There aren’t any written rules against it, and it just made the whole game so much less frustrating as I didn’t have to spend ages re-finding or remembering things from earlier in a case.
Executive dysfunction can be… not nice to you sometimes, but the rules for MicroMacro: Crime City are short and have largely been well written. The formatting is also pretty good. The creators used blocks of text, but it’s broken up by bullet points and highlighted information.
You don’t even need to read all the instructions through before playing, just try playing one instruction at a time! Another a major positive: the instructions are white text on a black background.
Each case is relatively short, so if you’re not concentrating, it’s fine because you haven’t lost much progress like you would in a longer game. If you’re feeling in the zone, you can always take on one of the longer, tougher cases. There are no turns, so you don’t have to spend time waiting for others to hurry up.
Do what you need to do to help yourself with your concentration – music, silence, TV, fidget toys – and get stuck in!
Final Thoughts
Even being relatively new to board gaming, MicroMacro: Crime City was so simple to learn. Whilst I solved the first case solo, in the rest of the cases I took the role of lead investigator and was able to explain the rules to the other players without much issue.
There is an advanced mode option, which you play without the case cards. That is, you use the start card and solve the rest of the crime yourself. So, if you’re not a fan of doing what you’re told, or being spoon-fed, this might be the way to go after the introduction case.
There’s virtually no replayability, but there are 16 cases to play, plus an extra one on the box. You also have 3 more games and a bonus box to look forward to after this.
So why would you want to play this game? In short, it’s simple, easy to play but hard to master, and you get a great sense of achievement completing the cases.
All in all, I loved MicroMacro: Crime City, and I can’t wait to play the next one!
Ratings
Artwork: 5
Complexity: 2
Replayability: 1
Player interaction: 4
Component quality: 3
Overall: 90
You might like:
- Quick fire cases.
- Play solo or in a team.
- The level of accessibility.
You might not like:
- Being spoon-fed clues.
- Lack of replayability.
- Detailed map might hurt your brain.
Next game in the series is MicroMacro: Crime City – Full House
