Why Perspectives is my Favorite Detective Board Game

I have to start this article by issuing an apology to Asmodee Canada – many months ago, Asmodee sent over a box of games to review, and somehow Perspectives landed on a shelf it wasn’t supposed to be on, and we missed reviewing it all together. I also have to apologize to myself, because I could have been playing one of the best detective board games currently available, but instead it was sitting on a shelf hidden among the 100s of board games in our collection.

In Perspectives, any number of players (although the game recommends 2-6) sit around and attempt to solve a case using only images and little bits of story text. The box includes 3 different cases – as well as a tutorial case – each with 4 Acts. Each act contains story text, 12 images that can be evenly distributed between players, and 4 questions players will need to answer before moving onto the next Act.

Only one of the 4 questions will be made known to the players, and that is their primary goal each Act. However, good detective work will be required to answer the other 3 questions that players don’t know about.

The pictures are very clever, and provide little pieces of evidence, but on their own they can prove to be very useless to uncovering the mystery. Players will have a chance to freely discuss their cards, but can never show their cards to other players, or use their cards when answering the questions at the end of each Act. While the concept here is very simple, deducing all the information you need can take a bit of time, and poor communication between players, or players who lack some good critical thinking and examination, will make the task that much harder.

The game provides you a score out of 16, 4 points for each Act which correspond to the 4 questions asked. New cards will be distributed in Acts 2 and 3, while Act 4 will allow players to put all cards on the table face-up while they try to solve the final questions. The better you do out of 16, the better score you will get!

I’ve played many other games that are similar to this, including Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, Exit, and Unlock! All of these games are good – although Exit is my least favourite – but after playing Perspectives, I think it’s the best of the group. It’s easy to play but still provides you all the same positive feelings as you piece together the clues and solve the mystery. It takes away the frustrating timer in Unlock! and the impossibility to ever achieve an equal or better score to Sherlock in Consulting Detective. This game is very manageable, and a score in the 13-16 range is probably not out of the question for good critical thinkers.

This game feels manageable, but not necessarily easy. The first case, played between 2 players, took us about 60 minutes to complete. The second case, played between 4 players, took us about 90 minutes to complete. The more players you have, the harder the task becomes, but I would say it never feels easy. Did we get good scores? For sure we did. Did we make small errors in both cases we have tested so far? We did that as well.

I hope more Perspective games are coming in the future, because this one is absolutely brilliant. I cannot recommend it enough, and suggest you check it out. If you have a group that doesn’t necessarily love playing board games, this might be something they enjoy!