How to play MicroMacro: Crime City (Spoiler Free)

MicroMacro: Crime City is a cooperative deduction game.

Title: MicroMacro: Crime City

Year Published: 2020

Designer: Johannes Sich

Publisher: Edition Spielwiese

Players: 1-4

Game Time: Anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes

Set-up Time: Less than 1 minute

Ages: 12+

Theme: The cutest city you won’t want to live in

Mechanisms: Deduction, Mystery

How to win: Solve the case!

Game Description

Crimes have taken place all over the city, and you want to figure out exactly what’s happened, so you’ll need to look closely at the giant city map to find all the hidden information and trace the trails of those who had it in for their foes.

How to play MicroMacro: Crime City

A spoiler-free look at how to play MicroMacro: Crime City.

Theme

It’s not really a theme, it’s just a weird and wacky city with various levels of crime all over the place.

The stories of the crimes that unfolds as you discover each element is a lot of fun and I’m much more invested in it than I thought I would be.

I’ll talk more about the world in the artwork section.

Setup & Rulebook

Setup involves unfolding the map which is 100 times easier to do than to fold it back up!

The rulebook is short and fine. There are no ‘official’ rules in it for what to do when playing solo though? It could use a line to just say “get it right the first time because if you’re wrong you can’t have another go”.

I play solo and I tend to flip the card over covering the grid reference and take a quick look at the image. If it’s right I read the card, if not then I look further.

Components & Artwork

The map is cool but as I said it’s really hard to fold back up! The envelopes are a nice touch and putting the cards into them is easy enough to do without seeing spoilers. But why oh why are the envelopes see through on both sides!

The art is really cool. All the characters are unique as they need to be so you can spot them. But what is really cool is all the little detail on the map you see. Will it be part of a case you’ll get in the future? You can never be sure.

It’s really easy to see small detail too. The fact that it’s just black and white line drawings really helps here.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

No need to teach really, unfurl the map, read the card out loud and tell players what to look for!

It’s an open information co-op so accessibility is no issue as usual. I would suggest a player will need pretty decent eyesight. I need to put my reading glasses on!

Also, there’s a reason the rulebook tells you to make sure the room is well lit… twice.

MicroMacro: Crime City Summary

At a UKGE 2021, I took deliberately small bags so I had no room to buy games, maybe 1 small one. This was that one.

I admit it looked like fun when I first saw it months ago but I wasn’t bothered about buying it. Then the reviews came out and I thought, “I’m glad it’s good, but I’m not going to get it”. Then it won the Spiel des Jahres which is one thing but more importantly, it dropped in price slightly so I got it.

I’m glad I did because I’m enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would.

The way the crimes unfold as you go through the cards is really fun. When something happens and you think “Oh that’s unfortunate” then it turns out it wasn’t an accident!

MicroMacro: Crime City Round-Up

An incredibly fun and unique game that literally makes you want to keep playing and playing.

Rating

I give it 8/10