The chair creaks as you settle onto it. The candlelight flickers. All around you the ravenous faces of your so-called friends twist in delight as you slowly open the box laid out on the table. Welcome to Dangerous Games! Each week, we'll feature a horror/thriller/monster tabletop game you should be playing. Don't be scared… roll the dice… what's the worst that could happen?
'Mord Im Arosa' - Zoch Verlag (2010)
The police tape completely surrounds the glorious Arosa hotel. From your hotel room looking down onto the rain-slick streets you see nothing but flashing cop lights. The reds and blues dancing against the black night sky and the walls of the grand seven floor hotel. Moments ago you heard a scream, you heard the slump of a body, and you heard the footsteps of the guilty rush away into the depths of the hotel. Did you kill tonight? Even if you didn't, could the murder end up pinned on you anyway?
In the family game 'Mord Im Arosa,' two to six players listen closely for clues to the culprits of this heinous act. This is a cube-dropping deduction game, and you'll use your little wooden cubes to clink, clank, and clomp your way through the towering hotel. Listen closely as the cubes fall down the floors of the hotel, and make your best guess as to who's the killer!
Gameplay Mechanics
'Mord Im Arosa' begins with players dropping in two blood-red cubes into the cardboard tower. Each level of the tower can be lifting to reveal a small landing which will fill with cubes as they get dropped in. After dropping the two blood-red cubes, which represent the murder victims, you and your opponents will then each drop two of your own colored cubes into the tower.
As you drop cubes, you'll hear them fall down through the various floors of the hotel. Listen closely and on your turn make a guess as to where the cubes have landed. After determining the floors where the murder took place (on a nice board set to the side), you'll begin guessing which cubes are on which floor. If you guess correctly, those players' colored cubes are put onto the side board and more are added to the tower. In the end, the players with the least incriminating evidence against them win. And one player will be dubbed the murderer!
Replay Value
This is a great party game. Good for families (who don't mind delving into the murder mystery aspects of the game), this game is also a blast to play with an all-adult table. This is a fast, half-hour game, and I've found myself and my gaming group coming back to it time and again. Set-up takes about sixty seconds and you'll be able to teach this game to your friends in under five minutes. It's not the deepest game, but if you've got a sharp ear and you like mystery games you'll return to this one often.
Overall Impressions
This is a game all about listening closely. You won't want to play this game in a loud place such as a cafe or bookstore. This is a game for your home, with nothing but the hiss and sizzle of candlelight in the background. I love the main mechanic behind this game, that of dropping cubes into a tower and listening as they fall through the narrow holes in the center until they come to a stop. This is an amazing game of simple, elegant design. The box art is wonderfully noir, the floors of the tower are richly illustrated, and it's all around a smash hit. Check this out, it's a wonderful game. You'll be shushing your friends and pinning murders on people in no time!