Masters of Crime: Shadows Murder Mystery Game | Art Heist | Co-op Game | 1+ Players | Ages 16+

While I haven't had the chance to full on play this myself yet (the holidays are a busy time!), this looks amazing with a great premise. AND you can even play by yourself! This is a huge plus for me as an only kid whose friends live in other states, and has no one to play games with. Many may say this has no replayability, there are ways to do that. Keep playing until you get a perfect score with the right team, store it for long enough that you don't remember it very well, or have adhd with memory issues and you have less time to set it aside before playing again, or perhaps you play it by yourself, but later have friends to play with. This is the first board game I've ever seen that actually allows for a single player and I got so excited. I love crime related shows/movies/video games/etc. so I had to get this and it looks super fun. I know I'll totally immerse myself, taking far longer to play than is typical.

We are big fans of Kosmos Exit games, so we were excited to try this different type of game from the same creators. Just like with the Exit games, so much obvious work went into the story and puzzles. All of the writing and descriptions were fun and cinematic. The websites that are used to enhance the game are absolutely next level. Beautifully professional. The overall story was a good premise that tried to build tension and mostly succeeded. The big criticism is that the preparatory section of the game is REALLY long. As you would expect with a heist, a lot of planning and footwork goes into a successful job, but not all of that is gripping fun. At the two and a half hour mark, the general feeling was that things were getting tedious and one of our players lost interest. When the game shifted from prep to execution, things moved a lot quicker and it felt much more like a movie. In the end, we had a good time, but it ended up taking up a whole afternoon into the evening. The box says it takes 2-4 hours and it isn't kidding. Maybe it would have gone a bit quicker and smoother if we had more people playing. I suggest at least four players. I have to say that some of the puzzles didn't seem to add up and we got confused or stuck a couple of times. The support website did a fairly good job with hints and (when necessary) solutions, but there are parts of the game we feel like were missed entirely because of design mistakes. I can't say we liked Masters of Crime: Shadows as much as the Exit games, but we had enough fun with it that we would give another title in the series a shot.

This is fantastic. I love games that can be played by yourself or with a group. Yes, it's a long game but that's part of what makes it worthwhile. It's only able to be played once then you can give it to someone else to try. I recommend making copies of the "notes" before you write on them so they can be used again. There's so much about this game that makes it fun - the interaction and different methods to solve the puzzles is so clever and makes it all the more enjoyable and keeps you guessing.$25 is about what you'd pay to do an escape game (most are even more than that) so this is VERY worth it. I recommend HIGHLY!

Because they titled this a “murder mystery,” I expected more of a murder mystery dinner party style box set. This is not that. It’s more of a “choose your own adventure“ art theft heist card game.Please set aside at least 3 hours (likely more!) for this game. I would recommend spending half an hour just studying how the game works before you start. We got lost quite a few times and definitely didn’t play the game correctly.Be ready to think. There are highly complex puzzles and research that must be done as well as group decisions.Overall, I think this would be a great game for serious gamers or thinkers with a bit of time to spend. We were expecting a more relaxed, casual game night and this was not it. Excellent for the right audience who is patient.As regards quality of game pieces- the main board is a single use only paper sheet. You will not be playing this game again. The “notes” page included was slick and many pens and pencils would not work on that type of material. The cards were good quality, as well as the folded and sealed “envelopes.”

There are a lot of "Escape room" type games, and others in the puzzle genre.Typically you're playing as relative "good guys", most classically trying to escape or solve a crime.This series turns those traditions on their head by having you play as criminals. A fun twist. Especially because, in this case at least, you're also trying to get IN to a place (instead of out), since this is about an Art Heist.The puzzles are fun, pretty well-balanced and reasonable, and make good use of the internet for cool types of interaction. Means someday this will probably not be solvable any more, since Kosmos won't be paying to host this content forever. But I'd expect it to be there for many years, and anyway you can really only play through this experience once (though you can then give it to someone else, which is pretty great)All in all we had a good time with this. If you, either by yourself or with other likeminded adults, like the idea of devoting a few hours to some detective/puzzle-solving work surrounding this theme, I think you'll be as pleased as we were.