DEADLINE
Crack cases in smoky 1930s New York in this co-op puzzler
WizKids | £44.99 | Deduction | 2-4 players | 45 minutes | Age: 14+ | wizkids.com
From the pulp magazine cover of its box down, Deadline is in love with noir. Its detectives are thinly-veiled homages to iconic hardboiled writers such as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, its cards feature literal symbols of the genre – cigarettes, whiskey, bundles of cash, revolvers and fedoras – and its ‘plot twist’ events play off of classic crime-fiction tropes, with skeletons in the closet, threatening phone calls and being tailed all part of the drama hindering players in their efforts to solve each of 12 unique cases.
The reason Deadline works quite so well is because it is absolutely aware of its roots. There are echoes of the more exposition-heavy Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective model in the need to gather information and answer a series of questions at the conclusion of each mystery, but Deadline deftly condenses the process from Consulting Detective’s endless paragraphs of text into a series of concise clue cards. Each burst of writing is enjoyable – it occasionally becomes a little too noir-by-numbers, but remains solid enough to keep each mystery intriguing throughout the relatively breezy sub-hour play time.