Micro Macro: Crime City

Note: This is a short, really early legacy review before I started posting longer form reviews in our Facebook Group.

Our second game of the afternoon was equally a quieter affair as we finally decided to sit down with Micro Macro Crime City the winner of this year’s Spiel des Jahres (board game of the year).

Micro Macro Crime City is essentially Where’s Wally but with crime-solving and clues to follow. The massive fold-out map shows everything that has and will happen in the story so you can follow a crime from planning to evidence along the way.

Jack(6) was totally enthralled and Toby(3) enjoyed getting involved even though some of the puzzle logic was a bit above him.

In the end, we did 4 cases and was eager for more but it was already past bedtime and Katie(34) was shouting that it was bedtime…

I do have a few reservations and a strong warning

Firstly while this is fairly cheap coming in normally at around the £20 mark there are 16 cases and while they do increase in difficulty there is no real replay value after you have solved the cases so this isn’t a long-term investment. You don’t however damage the components so could easily sell this on.

Also while it has a child-friendly look and the game says 8+ this does at the end of the day have some mature themes as you solve cases about murder, suicide, bank robbery, adultery and prostitution. I won’t list them here but a quick online search shows the cases with more adult themes and these can be removed if you choose (i don’t intend to do the adultry/prostitution case). None of the scenes are gory or explicit but they might lead to conversations you may not want to have. I made the decision my boys could deal with this and I would discuss any questions with them but I would hate to not make this super clear and someone be caught off guard by it.

I suspect somewhere down the line we may see a family version with crimes about escaped kittens or lost keys but this is not that.

So if the 2 caveats do not bother you then this is definitely £20 well spent for a few afternoons of crime-solving. There is also a sequel out soon as well as a promo pack with 2 extra cases that is readily available online.