Osprey Games Cryptid

Product Information

The game is a competitive puzzle. It’s a race to find out the solution, but a race where your opponents’ progress is at best translucent. You can sort of tell how much they know about each clue from where and who they’re questioning. You never know what they’ve figured out and a lot of the time it’s that one bit of extra information that can give you an “aha!” moment that lets you solve the whole thing. That is one of the greatest stunts I've ever seen, and surely one of the greatest stunts ever filmed. I don't even remember the movie, but I sure remember that train stunt. The goal of the game is to correctly identify the only space on the board which can be the cryptid's habitat. Every game begins with the initial sharing: the starting player must place a cube in a space on the board which could not be the habitat, according to their clue. Sometimes you will be forced to give the other players information about your clue. When this happens you must be honest in your responses, but it is often possible to answer in a way that either misleads the other player or gives away as little as possible. While the simple binary of the game’s information system may make it seem manageable, if you want to win you’ll need to make sure you’re a step ahead of everyone else. That’s not always as easy as it seems in a game where information is accessible to all and you are forbidden from lying. Which is where the next layer to Cryptid begins to reveal itself after a handful of plays, because while you must always tell the truth with your yeses and nos, there’s no rule against misdirection.

Players may receive negative as well as positive clues, so some clues may include the phrase 'the habitat is not here'. The habitat is within one space of either animal territory. This includes spaces inside those territories. I didn't play the previous Cryptid game, though I heard stories that it was a challenging enjoyable game that looked like the bum end of Mothman, scary and interesting but ultimately not the nicest thing to look at. Fast forward to this year and we have Cryptid: Urban Legends, a two player competitive puzzle game designed by Ruth Veevers and Hal Duncan and dripping with simply stunning artwork from Kwanchai Moriya, an artist who illustrated my wonderful darling Catacombs and continues to age like a fine wine in terms of the talent and art they are bringing to the table. Over time and with some careful observation, you’ll be able to hazard a guess at the information they might hold, and hone your own search accordingly. That also introduces the possibility of misleading your opponents, asking questions about terrain you already know can’t possibly be the correct type; a stone-cold poker face can be a considerable advantage. The game can be swinging against you, but what if you have more evidence tokens than your opponent? Do they abandon their plan to try and gain evidence counter parity, or go gung-ho into trying to win the game? For all I like about the game, it isn’t without problems. If you’re a fan of Cryptid, I would approach Urban Legends with caution. A Puzzle RaceMy oldest daughter played clarinet and I got her a middle grade one so we didn't have to rent it. Of course, just after we got it she quits.

This makes you paranoid and makes each player more likely to search before they are ready to. In a four-player game it doesn’t take long to imagine the game will be over before you have another go. This makes you want to jump the gun on Searching. A failed Search is a godsend for the other players, as it reveals a lot of information at once. By trying to prevent the game ending before your next turn you will cause the game to end before your next turn. Example:'The habitat is not within two spaces of bear territory.' This clue says where the habitat cannot be. It cannot be any space which is within two spaces of any bear territory, which would all be marked with cubes. It can be any space which is not within two spaces of bear territory, which would be marked with discs. On your turn you have two options, Questioning or Searching. You will Question much more often but Searching is how you win the game. Questioning means indicating a space and asking; “Could the Cryptid live in this space?” to one player. If the answer is yes, they place a disc. If the answer is no, they place a cube and then you have to place a cube. Example:'The habitat is within one space of desert.' The desert spaces are all within one space of themselves, so they could be the habitat. A cube would be placed on any space which is more than one space away from a desert space.

Game Play

If one of your discs is already on that space, you must place a disc on a different space which could be the habitat according to your clue, and which does not already contain one of your discs.

If they placed a cube, you must now also place a cube on a different space which cannot be the habitat according to your clue. The turn now passes to the player on your left. If you make someone place a cube on your turn, you must also place one of your cubes somewhere on the board. This applies whether you questioned or searched. miscellaneous things to make the game look cleaner! (expression dissolves! textbox fades! text alignment! corrected typos!) From Bigfoot and the Yeti to El Chupacabra and the Loch Ness Monster, rumours of strange, undiscovered creatures are some of our most enduring modern-day myths. This game from first-time designers Hal Duncan and Ruth Veveers casts players as monster hunters on the trail of one of these weird beasts – and to find it before your rivals you’ll need powers of logic, deduction and just a hint of sneaky misdirection. Deduction games are some of my most favorite styles to play and Cryptid is a fantastic addition to the genre. I absolutely love that it is so simple. There are no cards, dice, or variable player objectives to worry about. You are simply trying to deduce where the creature is through pure logic.

Fake it ‘Til You Find it

There are 10 dateable characters: 3 girls, 4 guys, and 3 non-binary pals. They're a healthy mix of legendary and local cryptids and monsters!

Example:'The habitat is on forest or swamp.' This player knows the habitat is on a forest space or a swamp space, so would place discs on those spaces. The player knows the habitat cannot be on any other terrain type, so would place cubes on spaces with any other terrain type. On each of your turns you’ll be able to choose a location on the board and ask one of your opponents whether the creature could live there. They’ll either answer yes, placing a circular token on the space, or no, placing a cube. As the rounds progress, you’ll collectively cover more and more of the board with markers and, along the way, you’ll try to use the revealed information to guess what your opponents’ clues might be. Are they constantly placing certain types of markers on certain types of terrain? Are they guessing at locations close to particular structures or landmarks? What sets Cryptid apart from most deduction games is that the map is a huge part of the process. Clues are much harder to visualize in a physical space than they are on raw logical terms. We might not notice that a hex is near a wooden cylinder or that another has red lines denoting a different habitat.It takes several games of Cryptid to get used to the way it looks, and that can be off-putting to players who are already on the fence about a game this analytical. The terrain tiles, by necessity, feature a wide array of colors and textures as they need to easily represent differing types of topography such as water, deserts, forests, mountains, and swamps. That much is forgivable, because there’s really no way to make 5 tile-types look distinct and still mesh. It’s the minutia of the game that make an already challenging premise doubly so. Any element on the board is zero spaces away from itself. This means that any clue which specifies that the habitat is within a certain distance of an element includes the space that element is on. We sit, trying to pull together the strands of what we're given. And all of sudden, I see why knowing the clue types are important. It allows you to reverse engineer the patterns in clue placement. Then you can guess what other player's clues are and put them together to find the habitat hex. I am fearful, wondering what my questions and answers might reveal about my own clue, and whether anyone has guessed it. But I also know, now that despite its simplicity, this is no gateway or family game. The logic chains are too long and cumbersome for that. If nobody places a cube, you have correctly identified the habitat and won the game! You should take the opportunity to bask briefly in the adulation of the other players, before comparing clues.