IELLO: Guilty: Houston 2015 - Cooperative Board Game, Deduction, Murder Investigation at County Prison, Ages 18+, 1-99 Players, 180-240 Min

This was a gift for some friends. We played it when I visited them. It was fun. It is a one time use game tho.

I’ve played and enjoyed 100s of mystery games (of varying difficulty) from all sorts of different developers and this is one of the worst I’ve ever played. I have played both Houston AND Monaco —- same experience. So shame on my for trying both but I had hoped perhaps one of them might be better. The evidence doesn’t add up, the story makes no sense, and it genuinely feels as though the evidence was put in AFTER the story was written. There’s no logical flow and none of the clue actually add up. Everything feels so disjointed and overly complicated. The answers are explained at the end but everything feels as though it’s simply a complete stretch of the imagination and nothing truly feels as though it adds up. I have enjoyed other styles of games from this developer but never going to get another “Guilty.”

I got both on sale and while both are terrible, MONACO is not playable. The mechanics are totally broken and the english translation is so off that you will end up not being able to progress at all since this was translated from (French?) incorrectly in key places which led to me seeing spoilers only a few minutes in! The HOUSTON one is at least *playable* mechanics wise but the story ending is **No Spoilers** SO cringey because the writer apparently didn’t have time to do any research on this topic and if a player DOES put the work into the case they too will be angry at how the ending makes no sense based on the most basic aspect of human biology. I’ll leave it there so not to spoil but these are just so bad :(