deduction

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

Your creepy Neighbor has something locked up in their basement, and it’s up to you and your friends to reveal their plot. You’ll need to use Objects you find around the Neighbor’s house to locate three different Keys, but there is one problem: some of your friends are secretly villainous Neighbors in disguise! Trade and cooperate as one of the Kids, or steal and lie your way to victory as one of the Neighbors in this thrilling social-mystery card game where you’re never quite sure who’s on your side.

5-10 players take on the roles of either one of the neighborhood kids, the treacherous neighbor or even a secret neighbor. As one of the kids you will need to use your items wisely if you are to locate the keys and unlock the door to win, but beware as not only are the neighbors at the table trying to trick you, but one of your fellow kids is actually a SECRET NEIGHBOR!

A series of sabotages has shocked Lucky Llama Land! Multiple attractions at the theme park were tampered with. Players start their investigations and combine clues about the days of the crimes, perpetrators, tools, and crime scenes. They need to generate the right number code and use the key to put the saboteurs behind bars. In the end, it’s not necessarily the fastest investigator who wins the game, but the most efficient one.

The 3rd game in The Key series by Thomas Sing, this one introduces new clue types and puzzles for players to solve. A replayable mystery game.

-description from publisher

Break the Code is a logical deduction game played with number tiles and question cards. You win if you can guess all of your opponent's tiles in a two-player game or if you can guess the face-down tiles in the center for a three- or four-player game. Put on your thinking cap!

Place all of the number tiles face down and shuffle them. Place your game screen in front of you, then randomly take your tiles. Place them face up behind your screen in numerically ascending order starting from the left. If you have two tiles with the same number, place the black tile on the left. Once you have placed your tiles, removed any unused number tiles from the game. Lastly, shuffle the question cards and place them in a pile face down. Draw the top six cards from the pile and place them in the center of the table.

Deduce all of your opponent's tiles (or the center tiles) and correctly guess their colors and numbers in order from left to right.