There’s plenty of different takes on the social deduction game, or a Werewolf game, or an “Among Us-like” if you will. And here’s one more to add in this social-forward genre: a game where talking is not required.
Jack & Detectives is a game where one person is Jack, as in the infamous murderer Jack The Ripper, and they must murder and get away with it. The rrest are Detectives, who must figure out who among the players are Jack.
The twist in Jack & Detectives’ take on social deduction game is twofold. One, you don’t need to talk. So conversation via voice chat or text is not part of this game. The other, is that no one gets eliminated. So detectives will still be on the case throughout the 10-minute game.
So how does it work then?
Jack & Detectives has each player on different tiles. Jack gets to pick an adjacent tile to commit murder on. And once the murder tile is revealed, all detectives adjacent to the murder tile are prime suspects, as one of them could be Jack.
Every turn, Jack and the detectives will be able to move around. So Jack has to strategically move and pick a murder tile which will incriminate the most people just to cover their track, while detectives have to figure out how to corner the possible murderer hidden in plain sight.
This board game-esque setup makes more sense when you consider the developer of this indie game is Japan-based Curiouspark, where they primarily digitise indie board games from Japan.
The game supporrts cross-play on all platforms, with ranked matches and private rooms (to play with friends) avaialable.
Jack & Detectives is available on PC (Steam) for the low price of RM13.9 in Malaysia, and is free-to-play (with ads, in-app purchase to remove ads available) on iOS and Android. A release on Nintendo Switch is coming soon.