Ordered this game for a Christmas present on the 20th of December (last minute, I know...) and got it the day after with some great expedited shipping!Love love LOVE it!We haven't had time to put it away since we got it, because we keep playing it!Friends and family that watch Dexter (and even those who don't) love the game as well!It says only 4 players maximum can play, but if you find other pieces there is no reason you can't have more people play!Super fun, kinda dark, not for kids, but great for adults' game nights!A little bit of strategy and a lot of luck makes this game great! The best part is that every player gets to be Dexter Morgan! I recommend this product to every Dexter/board game lover out there!
Let me preface this by saying Dexter is my favorite show and so I was all geared up to love this game! A family member gave this to me for a present and then the rest of the family was of course forced to play it with me.
The idea of the game is neat. Each player starts out being dealt two "On the Prowl Cards" these are cards that tell you which two suspects you are trying to kill (you only need to kill one to win), the card also tells you what tools you need to kill the suspect with and what location on the board you need to get to in order to kill them. Each player then starts at Miami Metro police department and must move around the board attempting to collect a suspect and the matching three tools needed to dispose of him or her. Once this is done then the player must move to the specific location on the board where your suspect must be killed. When you are at this location you place your suspect, tools, and on the prowl card into your "garbage bag" a little black plastic pouch and you must painstakingly go back around the board to return all your leftover suspect tokens, tools etc. Then once this is done you must travel to the marina in order to win the game. Throughout there are also other random cards which may give you rewards or have negative consequences and a set of cards of blood spatter which you may match up in order to get a reward.
The game sounds great except for the fact that it never ends! One problem is that there are specific spaces on the board to collect suspects (which are turned downward so that you cannot tell which suspect is located where) and if you do not roll the specific number on the die you cannot stop on a suspect spot. This can lead to players circiling the board endless times without getting a single suspect...and even if you land on one it's pretty unlikely you find one of the suspects you specifically need. The second problem is that you can pick up someone else's suspects as an aggressive strategy, and so a player may be circling the board for an hour looking for one of their two suspects and they can never find them because you took them. A third issue is that the board is not set up in a simple pattern, it has random twists and turns and all of these random one way signs so that you cannot get to spots that you need to get to in order to make progress in the game. The fourth problem is that there is a set amount of each tool token. So for instance there may be five tool tokens which have knives on them but only two that have welding masks. If you need a wedling mask and other players have already picked them up then you cannot complete your mission. So just like with the suspects, if a player is feeling particularly mean they can keep you from winning while they try to find all of their needed items.
My family played this game for an hour before we gave up on the original rules and began to allow players to stop on spaces even though they didn't roll the exact number on the die. Then after another forty-five minutes the rest of the family started telling each other which suspects they had or didn't have and tried trading them. After another fifteen minutes we all gave up and my loving family said that I won because I was the closest to winning out of anyone.
As a whole it was a big let down that took WAY too long to play and no one has been willing to play the game with me ever since!
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This is a really fun game. My husband and I play, but made some modifications. For one I made folders with pockets to hold the chips and cards which has greatly improved the quality of the game. Second we pass out 4 suspect cards in order to move the game along quicker.
Some problems: the board can be a little hard to read as there is so much info on it. The chips are not the highest quality and are small. If the chips were plastic and larger I think this would be an improvement.
I do think this could be a fun game even if you are not a Dexter fan. You are not required to have watched the show at all to play like to TV shows turned game.
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We had a large group over the night of the season finale. We played this game and had a lot of fun!
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Mostly just fan service. Actual game is OK but just not that interesting with little tension or strategy. I'd recommend getting this only as a piece of memorabilia for dexter fans.
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Works well for 1 deck, but we play Canasta with 3 decks, so it's a little shallow and tips a little when 3 decks are in one side.But it's the best one I could find.I doubt it would work for 4 decks.
