What did you like about the game?
It felt very very good to win it.
So the Rear Window board game is a cooperative deduction game - there's a little bit of Clue, a little bit of Mastermind, and a little bit of Dixit, if that makes sense. It manages to do a very good job of inserting that tension or suspense that Hitchcock is famous for, so when that tension is released it's great actually.
The way it works is you are trying to guess four people (out of 8) and their corresponding attributes (out of 12+1), based on cards strategically placed in their apartment windows, over the course of four successive days (turns). At the end of each day you are told how many (out of eight) you guessed correctly, but not which ones.
So that's the Clue and Mastermind elements; the Dixit element is that the cluegiver (the Director) plays down these semiotically rich cards in the eight windows and you have to scour the artwork to try to figure out what on earth they're trying to tell you. And they have to place every card they draw, so it's a "make do with what you have kind of thing."
Anyway we got 3 on the first two turns (which was frustrating because it meant I was wrong about which three I thought were right), 6 on day 3, and I managed to pull off all 8 including the murder (if there's a murder the win conditions change so now the Director doesn't want you to figure it out), and it was nerve-wracking and very exciting.
This is the second licensed game I've played by Prospero Hall - the first was a Back to the Future game. And I gotta say, the man knows his business. BttF was also a very mechanically simple game that nevertheless captured the thematic core of its base film surprisingly well. The thing about licensed games - that is, board game adaptations of copyrighted media - is that they tend to suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Usually because they know all the appeal will be in the licensed property and so don't bother to actually make a game. (Battlestar Galactica is a supreme outlier adn should not have been counted). But these Prospero Hall games (and he's done tons of them) so far have managed to be light-to-mid weight and just solid. He manages to bake the theming into the mechanics (rather than have it as just a skin) without overcomplicating them. The bits are high production value cardboard (the reason we didn't buy the Walking Dead game is because the production values were lousy and also licensed games tend to suck) and enhance the gameplay in small but satisfying ways - the Clock Tower in BttF is also a dice tower, for instance. (My one complaint is that the wheels on the DeLorean don't move, but on the other hand you don't want it rolling around - the whole thing is you have to push it). My overwhelming takeaway is that Prospero Hall understands the assignment. Which is such a rare thing to see in this genre of games.
Anyway, if you enjoy logic & deduction games, and/or Rear Window, I do recommend this one. The adrenaline has worn off, but it was a good time.
