P.I. Deduction Board Game First Impressions

I hate when people sum up a game by saying “Oh so it’s ‘Game A’ with a bit of ‘Game B'”. I get really mad when people do that. So I won’t do that with P.I.

Here is a review of Cluedo mixed with Minesweeper.

P.I. is a pure deduction game, with players competing in three consecutive mini-games in order to see who’s got the best chops in terms of solving their cases.

I’m kidding, of course, this game is great.

The board is set up with various set locations each having a random crime and suspect and some have no crime/no suspect.

The player to your right has a Crime, Suspect and Location card of the case you are trying to solve, so you need to find all 3.

That is the Cluedo portion, here is the Minesweeper.

Actions

On your turn, you can do one of 3 things.

There are 9 random cards face up, each one of the locations, suspects or crimes. You can pick one of these to investigate. Let’s say you pick a suspect.

The P.I. to your right, knowing who your suspect is will find him/her on the board. If you picked the correct suspect, he will put a disk of your colour on them so you know you have it right. If the suspect is in any of the neighbouring locations, they will put a cube of your colour on it.

Now you have a lead. You know the suspect you are after is in one of the locations around the person you questioned.

The other action you can take is to play a P.I. token. You have 5 of these for all 3 rounds of the game so use them wisely.

These are similar to the cards but instead of choosing a suspect, location or crime, you investigate all 3 at the same time in the chosen location plus all surrounding locations. One disk is placed for each correct item in the chosen location and a cube is placed for each item that is in an adjacent location. But you won’t know which disk/cube is for which part of the investigation.

These can give you LOT’S of info about your case.

Solving

The third thing to do is attempt to solve the crime. You take 3 black disks and put them in the 3 locations. If you are right, you’ve solved the crime. If you are wrong, you’re told you’re wrong but not where you went wrong.

Incorrect guesses give you a -2 point penalty.

Correct guesses give you up to 7 points depending on how quickly you solve the crime and the player count.

P.I. Summary

Even though my first 2 cases went unsolved and I had the full -10 penalty points, I really enjoyed this. It’s fun when you are SURE that a card will give you clues and it doesn’t and you gasp. It can also be fun when you play a PI token in a location and get 2 disks and a cube. It’s fun when other players do this too.

It’s fun

Jesta ThaRogue