deduction

The year is 1913. The steamship SS Atlantica is two days out from port on its voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. Its unsuspecting passengers fully anticipated a calm journey to Boston, Massachusetts, with nothing out of the ordinary to look forward to. However, strange nightmares plague the minds of the people aboard the ship every night; rumors circulate of dark shapes following closely behind the ship just beneath the waves; and tensions rise when a body is discovered in the ship's chapel, signs of a strange ritual littered around the corpse.

Lurking within the depths of the Atlantic Ocean are a swarm of vicious, unspeakable horrors: the Deep Ones, led by Mother Hydra and Father Dagon. For reasons unknown, they have set their sights on the Atlantica, and their minions, taking the form of human-Deep One hybrids, have infiltrated the steamship to help sink it from within. Each game of Unfathomable has one or more players assuming the role of one of these hybrids, and how well they can secretly sabotage the efforts of the other players might mean the difference between a successful voyage and a sunken ship.

If you're a human, you need to fend off Deep Ones, prevent the Atlantica from taking too much damage, and carefully manage the ship's four crucial resources if you want any hope of making it to Boston, all while trying to figure out which of your fellow players are friends and which are foes. Everyone shares the same resource pool, but humans will try to preserve them while traitors will strive to subtly deplete them. Being able to tell when someone is purposefully draining the group's resources is harder than you think, especially when you take crises into account!

At the end of each player's turn, that player must draw a mythos card. Each of these cards represents a crisis that the whole group must try to resolve together. Some of these crises, such as "Food Rationing", call for a choice that could potentially put the ship's passengers or resources at risk, while others, such as "Hull Leak", call for a skill test in which failure could have disastrous consequences.

During a skill test, each player contributes skill cards from their hand to a face-down pile shared by the group. Once everyone has contributed (or chosen not to), the cards are shuffled, then revealed. If enough of the correct skills were contributed, then the group passes the test! But if the wrong skills were contributed, they can actually hinder the results, leading to failure. Thus, skill tests are dangerous opportunities for traitors to sabotage the humans' efforts, so you have to stay on your toes at all times.

—description from the publisher

There has been a shocking string of robberies at Cliffrock Villa. Valuable works of art have been stolen! The players start their investigations and combine clues about the perpetrators, time of the crimes, stolen items, and escape plans. They need to generate the right number code to put the thieves behind bars. In the end, it’s not necessarily the fastest investigator who wins the game, but the most efficient one.

—description from the publisher

Eine schwere Raubserie erschüttert die Cliffrock Villa, wertvolle Kunstobjekte wurden gestohlen! Die Spieler nehmen die Ermittlungsarbeit auf und kombinieren die Hinweise zu Täter, Tatzeit, Beute und Fluchtweg. Schlussendlich müssen sie den richtigen Zahlencode generieren und bringen so die Räuber hinter Gitter. Am Ende gewinnt nicht unbedingt der schnellste, sondern der effizienteste Ermittler.

—description from the publisher (German)

Fangs is a re-implementation of the social deduction game Shadow Hunters. Players are secretly dealt characters that belong to one of three teams: vampires, werewolves, or humans. The vampires and werewolves win by destroying the other team, while the humans are generally trying to simply stay alive (though some characters may end up aligning with one of the other two teams).

Since everybody starts knowing only who they are, they must start working on deducing who the other players are and whether they are friend or foe. Acting quickly may help you gain an advantage by weakening the opposing team before they realize which of the players fighting is their ally, but moving hastily with limited information may see you accidentally eliminate a teammate and set your side back in the conflict.

On each turn, players either try to gather information, find new equipment, or try to harm (or aid) another player. Different areas of the map influence what you may discover and who you may interact with while certain cards and abilities mean you can never be certain that things will go according to plan.

The Menace Among Us is a semi-cooperative game of intrigue and survival in deep space. Adrift and powerless, your crippled vessel is bleeding oxygen. As you effect repairs, every breath you take brings you one step closer to death. You must work together to restore power before the air runs out — but hidden among you, as loyal friends and crew members, are imposters who have infiltrated security and continue to sabotage the ship. Their only goal is to avoid detection and kill the crew, by force or by asphyxiation. Can you identify them in time and eliminate the threat? Or will succumb to the menace among us?

The Menace Among Us is a 40 to 60-minute, asymmetrical card game for 4-8 players. Each player chooses an Agenda at random, either a loyal Crew member, a deadly Menace or the Coward, who’ll take any side just to survive. Your Agenda card sets a Team Goal and an Individual Goal, as well as outlines any special abilities and the card composition of your individual 13-card deck. Then, knowing your Agenda and Goals, you choose a Character who you believe will best help you achieve them or mask your true identity. Characters add 7 new cards to your deck, shuffle-building a unique combination of cards, as well as provide you two specialized Above Deck Actions.

In this hidden traitor game, how you play your cards and abilities is far more important than the meta game aspects of accusations and denials. Cards are played face down and shuffled together as “Below Deck Actions.” Here, Menace players secretly sabotage the ship’s systems and attack crew members, who are trying to save the ship with their cards. If too few crew members risk going below deck to effect repairs, the ship’s Emergency Maintenance Assistant (EmMA) adds cards to the pile to help. However, the system has also been compromised and occasionally places damaging cards into the mix, providing plausible deniability to the Menace players. In contrast, Above Deck Actions are conducted in full view of the crew. Most of these abilities have costs, either in Energy or Oxygen, both resources the crew is trying to increase. So, while The Doctor has the ability to heal a crew member and remove a debilitating effect, a Menace player, who may be secretly in control of The Doctor, cares far more that it costs 2 Oxygen to perform the healing.

At some point, someone’s behavior will raise suspicion. But, did they do so because they are trying to fulfill an Individual Goal – or are they a Menace? You can call a vote to expose their true nature. But if they are a loyal Crew member, you’ve just blown precious Oxygen in the effort to detain them. For that matter, was it a Menace player calling the vote in hopes of wasting the air on purpose?

If the Crew can find and eliminate the Menace players – and raise the Energy to a safe threshold before the air runs out, they win. If the Menace can prevent this or kill the crew outright, their mission succeeds. Special commendations are awarded for surviving and for achieving your Individual Goal.

—description from publisher

Blabel is a cooperative game in which players speak different fictional languages and have to learn to understand each other in order to build the Tower of Blabel together.

Each player gets a dictionary, made from 3 cards, that teaches them how to say the 10 words of the game in their unique language. These words are 4 materials, 4 objects to build, "yes", and "no". Then, each turn, the foreman tries to explain to the other players what they need to build. However, they can only speak the languages of the game.

The players' ability to notice similarities between their languages and remember one another's words will determine whether they manage to build the Tower of Blabel before they run out of turns.

But things are not always that peaceful in Blabel. You'll be facing earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, and fires, so build a resistant tower, or it'll be destroyed by these forces of nature.

—description from the designer