Review - Noir of the Indies - Noir - Level 99 Games

I recently complete a trade on BGG and as i throw in the person who traded me threw in fate of the indies and this game, a retheme of the game NOIR. I had heard good things about noir but never looked into buying. However, since it was right here in front of me, why not.

 NOIR: is a two-player game of hidden identities and deduction. Each player receives a secret identity from among 25 suspects and an open role that determines his available moves and victory conditions. The Killer plays by eliminating players, focusing more on intuition and reading his opponent. The Inspector uses secret information and his ability to accuse suspects to create a play style more focused around logical elimination of possibilities.

Stop the killer or be the killer. Depends on what kind of day you had at work.

We played killer vs. inspector. The game is a 5x5 25 card grid. In this game you win if your the killer if you A- kill the inspector or B- kill 16 people. The inspector wins by capturing the killer. Your options as the killer are kill someone, move 1 row up,down,left or right (making the card push off the grid appearing where you pushed from).  The inspector can accuse or move a row. The inspector can be frustrating because if the killer successfully switch characters (they call switch and if they pull a card of someone not dead they become that person). When you kill or accuse someone you must be touching from one of the eight sides, narrowing down who you might be for each opponent. We decided to play one of each.

Game 1

 Tyler started out as the killer and a much killing he did. there are a lot of rounds of moving cards as to not give away who you are. Every time i narrowed it down he switched. and he got all the way up to 12 Kills, and that's when his streak came to an end and i caught him.

Game 2

Now it was my turn and i said "I kill Amon". A fist smashed down on the table as Ty yells "Noooooooooo!" 1 Hit, 1 Kill.

As i was about to pack this game up a few odd things happened. First was that my son demanded to play again.....and again. And the second thing is that my wife walked by a couple times during the first few games and after the 4th game she said "OK i'm in!" and sat down and played. I can assure you this has never happened before and is a testament to how solid this game is.

 



Dad:

"I am not familiar with the characters in the game to be quite honest since i played This before any BattleCon, So Dareios looks like the 10th doctor."

Tyler:

"Heketch looks crazy, If this were an anime he would totally be the killer."

Dad:

"This game was an amazing surprise. I would consider this a microgame and it easily knocks love letter off as my favorite micro game. It is hard to get a bluffing element into a two player game and this one does it perfectly."

4.5/5

Tyler:

"I usually don't like guessing and bluffing games but this one is great! It's the gamers version of guess who? but with killing."

5/5

 You can get the regular version of NOIR here: