CRIMESIGHT: Beginners’ Guide (How to Get Started)

This entire guide will be a work in progress, since I felt like this game desperately needed a guide for new players to get a head start on the more emergent strategies – I’ll be updating with screenshots and content until it’s in a place I’m content with.

All the tips here will be for 1v1 games, as games with more players have the same basic principles – just split among more players. If you’re looking for specific tips for those types of games, please check the section in the table of contents!

• On game start, a Killer and Victim will be selected randomly from the pool of pawns. Moriarty is told exactly who these people are and needs to manipulate the Killer, with a weapon, onto the same square as the victim – Sherlock’s game is figuring out who they are based on context clues and process of elimination.
• The game is split into 3 days, with 3 phases each. If the game goes that long, there is a 10th phase in which Moriarty gets one more turn to try to get everyone into position, after the final deduction. At the end of each day, all pawns with no food will become hungry and be limited to 2 movement squares apiece. Sherlock will also reveal whether or not the Victim and Killer are within 3 pathable squares of each other.
• In each phase, Moriarty and Sherlock will simultaneously select pawns to move around the board. Sherlock gets to move any 3 pawns, while Moriarty can move 2 pawns – but not the designated Victim. Ties go in favor of Moriarty, but will rule out that pawn as a Victim. Any pawns not moved by a player will move automatically and randomly.
• Moriarty has a special action called Assail – once he selects this, the Killer will go last in the turn order and will attempt to move directly to the Victim for the kill. If the Killer is unable to kill the Victim on this turn, both the Killer and Victim will be revealed to all players and a final turn is played to determine who wins.

Easily the most impactful point of the game are the day end deductions, where Sherlock lets you know if the Killer and Victim are 3 pathable squares apart or not. If there are only a few people who are possible killers, you want to ensure they are all either within 3 squares or all too far away to be included in the deduction – having your suspected killers separated during the deduction can result in the possibilities narrowed to one, which will instantly trigger the final turn. If your Killer is too far away at that point or there are too many bystanders nearby, that can be an instant loss.

Moriarty has vision of what nodes have food and weapons, so it is comparatively easy to ensure the Killer has food and doesn’t become hungry at the start of the next day. Not only will you be more likely to be out of position because of the end of day deduction, when you’re moving to Assail you will want to be able to do full 3 move turns – otherwise it becomes extremely easy for the Victim to stay out of range.

This also means it is extremely advantageous to try to deny food to the Victim – if they are limited in their movement, it becomes much easier to catch them during the final Assail if you get to a point where you need to use it.

Sherlock does not have vision of which nodes are food and weapons, so your goal is to search as often as possible. You can also use food and medicine from other pawns on your suspected Victim, which can help them regain their mobility.

The game will keep track of all the confirmed tells – in practice, every time you lose a pawn movement conflict you learn that the pawn is not a Victim, since Moriarty can’t move Victims. You can often use this to eliminate the pool of Victims, and learn exactly who it is you need to be protecting.

The nightly deduction is your best tool for determining roles – if you have a good idea of who the victim is and have narrowed down who you think is the killer, it becomes easy to manipulate the pawns to only have a few of them on each side of the 3 pathable square rule. Once you know the likely Killers and the Victim, it becomes easy to keep bystanders nearby to prevent the murder.

In this game you get 10 turns to put your Killer in the same square as the Victim with a weapon in their hand – but you only get 3 turns to get them food before they become hungry and you can’t move them as far. This means your number one priority is to make sure your killer has food by the end of each night phase.

Going along with the last tip, it is an extreme advantage for you if the victim isn’t able to move as far each turn – so if you have a pawn nearby that isn’t going to be relevant anyways but you can use them to steal a likely food source from the victim, that can pay dividends down the road when it comes time to corner and kill them.

The thing that will trip you up the most in this game is the nightly deduction, where Sherlock checks for the Killer and Victim within 3 squares. It is extremely important then to assess which Killers are still available and make sure that they are either ALL within the 3 squares, or ALL outside of the 3 square range. Otherwise you may find yourself in a situation where the killer is one of only a few possibilities – or worse, only a single possiblity which will trigger the final turn and cause you to lose the game.

3v1: The game plays exactly the same, except the 3 Sherlock turns are split among 3 different players who each receive one. You will have to coordinate your movements via the ping system, but Moriarty will also be able to view your communications (unless you figure out who he is and block him).

2v2: The two Sherlocks receive 2 actions each, with Moriarty keeping 2 actions and all the powers he has in the 1v1 game. The other character is Irene, who works with Moriarty and has only 1 action. She is also unable to use fuse boxes. However, if she seizes control of a pawn the Sherlock players are NOT notified, which means she should probably be the one to move the killer around as it will not update the UI to show them as a non-victim in the event of a movement conflict.

This game is essentially an asymmetric boardgame in which both players act simultaneously. The two teams are:

Sherlock – You enter the game with no role knowledge, and must make deductions based upon the actions of the other player. These can be soft tells such as observing a pawn following another one suspiciously, or more obvious ones such as a pawn moving in a way that would normally be impossible or the other player seizing control of a pawn you attempted to move.

Moriarty – You have less moves than Sherlock (2 as opposed to his 3), but as you move simultaneously, any conflicting orders to a pawn will be won by you. You have full knowledge of the Killer and Victim, and your goal is to engineer a situation where the Killer, in possession of a weapon, is on the same square as the Victim with no bystanders able to intervene. Your only restriction is that you are unable to move the designated Victim.

The game has a UI that will keep track of any confirmed tells, which is visible to both players. For example, if Moriarty moves a pawn and seizes it from Sherlock, the UI will update to show both players that this pawn can not be a Victim (since Moriarty is not able to move Victims).