It’s family fun night – and that means game time! But if you’re looking for something a little more in-depth, and a whole lot more thinky, some deduction board games are just the ticket to get the brain active while having fun. These ten games are the best on the market according to board gaming enthusiasts, so grab your copies today for a heaping helping of mysterious fun.
10 Best Deduction Board Games
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea
Age: 10+ Players: 2-5 Time: 20 minutes
A trick-taking game, The Crew: Mission Deep Sea is a fantastic deduction board game that urges players to work together to search for the lost continent of Mu. The Crew dives deep to search for the mythological sunken land through how well players work as a team. Trick by trick, search parties discover challenges and find the route to the lost world.
Communication between you and your crew members is critical for your deductive search, but the kinds of communication are limited. You must win tricks, negotiate the order, and salvage operations to reach your goal.
Decrypto
Age: 12+ (Community 10+) Players: 3-8 Time: 15-45 minutes
In Decrypto, two teams are formed among 3 to 8 players to work towards decoding messages together. Each team sends messages and tries to intercept messages from the opposing team – but then they must use logical deduction to crack the code and find the answer! Each team has its own screen behind which they place four cards in pockets (numbered 1 to 4). Everyone on the team can see the cards of their own team. In the first round, one player takes a code card that shows 3 digits between 1 and 4, in any order. That team member must give a coded message to their teammates with which to crack the code. If the team deduces the code correctly, they move on. If they inaccurately guess, they receive a mark against them.
During the second round, a member of each team repeats the practice, but the opposing team attempts to crack the code. If they’re correct, they receive a point; if they guess incorrectly, they receive a negative point. This repeats in each round until one team collects its second correct mark and wins the game or its second negative point and loses the game. If neither team has won within 8 rounds, though, the teams then duke it out by attempting to crack each other’s codes – and whoever guesses the most words correctly wins. Most players say the game lasts, on average, between 4 and 7 rounds.
Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game
Age: 14+ Players: 3-6 Time: 120-180 minutes
A game of political intrigue, betrayal, and survival – just like the science fiction series of the same name – Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game has become one of the most popular deduction board games available. It is a prime example of social deduction games, involving elements of lying and deception. And it’s not just fans of the show who love it.
Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game places players in roles of ten favorite characters from the show, each with their own abilities and limitations. The goal is to work together to save humanity from the Cylons. But, of course, one or more players are secretly Cylons and they actively work against the human players, but under the guise of help. Players must expose the traitors, avoid food contamination, prevent fuel shortages, and allay political unrest threatening the fleet.
The semi-cooperative game welcomes 3 to 6 players into a run time of between 2 and 3 hours, playing pilots, political and military leaders, and engineers. To determine who the traitors are, though, you can’t deduce them by who betrayed the humans in the TV show – instead, everyone is dealt a loyalty card at the beginning of the game, and these determine who is the traitor this time around. Throughout the game, players make moves and take actions for or against Galactica, using skill cards, deductive reasoning, and strategies to make their way through the game. As the game continues, more loyalty cards are dealt and some are turned to the cause of the Cylons.
Maintaining supplies and fending off Cylon attacks long enough ensures the humans will ultimately reach Earth and win – but if the Cylons succeed, and supplies vanish and too many humans are turned to the cause, the humans lose it all.
The Search for Planet X
Age: 13+ (Community 12+) Players: 1-4 Time: 60-75 minutes
Players take on the roles of astronomers who have noted a distant planet at the edge of the solar system. You’re on The Search for Planet X, trying to discover if this distant dot is real or just a wild imagining by hopeful dreamers. This game is a pure deduction game that focuses solely on solving puzzles through logical reasoning and information assessment. Players use logical deductions and observations to hunt for this hypothetical planet, using the companion app for a selection of randomly chosen objects and a location for consideration.
During each round, one revolution around the sun, players use the game app to scan the skies, attend conferences, and Search for Planet X with all the latest astronomical technology and scientific thought. As players identify locations of celestial bodies, they start publishing theories, scoring points for themselves. As these objects are found, the search area continues to shrink toward locating this dark, distant planet.
Once a player thinks they’ve discovered the planet and the heavenly bodies nearby, they may use the app to conduct the search and learn if they are correct. The game ends when someone finally identifies Planet X – and all players have a final chance to score additional points to earn the win.
Blood on the Clocktower
Age: 15+ (Community 14+) Players: 6-21 Time: 30-120 minutes
A bluffing and social deduction board game, Blood on the Clocktower gives players a look into Good and Evil as overseen by a Storyteller. Similar to games like ‘A Fake Artist Goes to New York,’ it combines bluffing, social deduction, and hidden roles. Accommodating 6 to 21 players total, the game divides players into townsfolks and demons before gameplay begins. But, of course, identities must be kept secret from everyone but the Storyteller, who runs the action and helps make vital decisions. The goal is for the townsfolk to survive, picking off the demons before they take down the humans.
The game cycles through “day” and “night” phases, with different actions made in each. During daytime phases, players socialize and trade knowledge, spread lies, and try to deduce who among the villagers is a demon in disguise. At the end of the daytime phase, villagers decide who to execute – who is most likely to be a demon. During the nighttime phases, players close their eyes and engage as the Storyteller tells them to take action. Players gather information, spread lies, or kill, according to their special roles. Then, everyone returns to sleep, and the next daytime phase kicks in. And, even if a player’s character is killed off, they remain active in the game by haunting other characters, trying to win from beyond the veil.
Diez (10) Negritos
‘Diez (10) Negritos’ is a captivating board game that involves solving a murder mystery. It is one of many games that incorporate deductive reasoning as a central mechanic, showcasing the versatility of this approach across different game styles. Players must use their wits to piece together clues and identify the culprit among the suspects.
Age: 8+ (Community 14+) Players: 1-6 Time: 90 minutes
Based on the beloved novel by Agatha Christie of the same name, Diez Negritos gives one to six players the cooperative board game chance to solve a mystery set on an isolated island. Characters begin mysteriously dying – murdered! – in the mansion where they have gathered. Players make up groups, playing specific characters in the murder mystery fun, and go off to different locations around the mansion and island to discover clues and ultimately deduce the identity of the murderer.
Each character in the game has unique abilities and players must take advantage of these, as well as the cards of the game, and deduce their way through the crime scene. The game has a ticking clock, though, so you’ve got to solve the murders before time runs out and the killer and accomplice get away with it all.
Cryptid is a game that involves pure deduction, requiring players to rely solely on logical reasoning and available information.
Cryptid
Age: 10+ Players: 3-5 Time: 30-50 minutes
A unique deduction game for you and yours to track down, Cryptid takes mystery in a different direction from most… It’s no murder mystery, it’s a cryptozoological mystery! That is, can you and yours discover a new, bizarre creature once thought mythological and prove it real?
Players must uncover clues and information about the unique, creepy creature, the Cryptid, and throw other players off the scent so they don’t beat them to the discovery. Each player has one piece of evidence to help them from the get-go – one critical piece of the puzzle – and they must use these clues on their turns to gain more information from other players without giving away the whole thing. Each player plays a unique role, using their abilities and strategies to craft potions and publish theories. Using the modular board, five clue books, and a deck of cards with hundreds of possible set-ups over two difficulty levels, players work their way through the puzzle to discover the mysterious animal before someone else and win the glory and the game for themselves. For extra fun, use the digital companion app for additional set-ups and puzzles to solve for nearly unlimited replayability for this deduction board game.
Alchemists
Age: 13+ (Community 12+) Players: 2-4 Time: 120 minutes
Two to four players can become alchemy experts in the mystical deduction game Alchemists. Your goal: discover the secret to creating the most prestigious potions possible with the Elements. Players earn points in many ways through this deduction game, including publishing theories, crafting potions, and testing the results. Of course, publishing correct theories of creating these magical potions is critical – and you come up with them by experimentation.
The game plays out over six rounds, with each round starting off with players choosing who starts first. Players declare their actions by placing cubes on action spaces and then gaining knowledge for their theories through mixing Elements together. The results are tested through the smartphone app, which randomizes the rules of each new game for unlimited replayability.
As the game plays out, the Alchemists’ reputations rise and fall, based on their theories, the mixed results of their potions (often sold to adventurers looking for magical boosts for their ventures), and the final exhibition. At the end of the game, those reputation points are converted into scores – coming from grants, money, artifacts, and more – and the player with the most points wins the game.
Codenames shares similarities with Love Letter, involving strategic card play and deduction.
Codenames
Age: 14+ (Community 10+) Players: 2-8 Time: 15 minutes
There are twenty-five agents out there and two rival spymasters know their identities. Teammates, however, only know them by their Codenames. These single-word codes make sense only to their handlers – names like carrot or Germany or disease, but these spymasters want you, their teams, to identify the agents in time to avoid the assassin… Of course, you also have to avoid uncovering said assassin or all is lost!
In Codenames, players are placed on two teams to compete against each other to see who can contact all of their agents first, avoiding the assassin. The 25 cards are laid out, and spymasters look at a card showing who each of the codenames apply to. They then take turns offering their teammates clues to discover who each single-word name applies to. Teams deduce the spies, aiming to call out agents of the other team (or innocent bystanders). The game continues until one team susses out all the opposing spies or the assassin takes out one team.
Similar to the classic game Scotland Yard, Codenames involves deduction and investigation mechanics where players must uncover hidden information.
Hooky
Age: 14+ (Community 12+) Players: 3-5 Time: 45-60 minutes
26 kiddos should be in classes today, but 3 are missing. Where are they? Playing Hooky! And it’s the morning before school starts, and the chaos of the new year has you, the homeroom teacher, all frazzled. It’s your job to figure out who’s missing and who’s just running late.
The three missing kids are on the Hooky cards. Whoever correctly deduces one of the missing kids earns points and finds a missing student. Players may also earn points by learning which students are in other players’ classrooms (their hands of cards).
Every student is represented by a letter of the alphabet and every player is dealt a few cards at the beginning of the game. The hands contain student cards, giving each player a selection of students they know are in their classrooms. Players ask each other questions to solve the mystery, with each answer coming in a five-letter word only. These clues help players deduce who’s present and who’s missing – then players may guess who they believe the three kids playing Hooky are. Ultimately, whoever scores the most points wins the game.
Conclusion
If you’re ready for some good old-fashioned detective-y fun, grab copies of these deduction games in time for your next game night. For social deduction board games, go with Blood on the Clocktower, Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game, Diez Negritos, and Codenames. For mysteries beyond, grab a copy of Hooky, Decrypto, The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, The Search for Planet X, Alchemists, or Cryptid. You’ll have a blast with any of them – and discover who’s got the most in common with Sherlock Holmes.
Also Read: Top 10 Most Playable Complicated Board Games
FAQ
1. What are deduction board games?
Deduction board games are games that require players to use logical reasoning and inference to uncover hidden information, solve mysteries, or determine hidden roles. These games often involve teamwork, strategy, and communication among players to achieve the game’s objectives.
2. What is a social deduction board game?
A social deduction board game involves players trying to uncover the hidden roles or identities of other players. These games often include elements of bluffing, deception, and strategic communication. Examples include Blood on the Clocktower and Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game.
3. How does The Crew: Mission Deep Sea work as a deduction game?
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea is a cooperative trick-taking game where players work together to search for the lost continent of Mu. Players must use limited communication and strategic planning to win tricks and solve challenges, making it a unique deduction experience.
4. What makes Cryptid different from other deduction games?
Cryptid stands out as a deduction game focused on cryptozoological mystery rather than murder or espionage. Players work to discover a mythical creature’s location using clues and logic, while trying to mislead other players to win the game.
5. Can Diez Negritos be played solo?
Yes, Diez Negritos can be played solo, accommodating one to six players. It’s a cooperative game where players work together to solve a murder mystery on an isolated island, using deduction and character abilities to uncover the murderer before time runs out.