Mr. Jack is a simple two-player deduction game for ages 9 and up with a dead hooker on the box cover. Depending on your personal tastes that may be all you need to know about this game, but assuming it isn’t I’ll continue. 8 investigators have shown up to the scene of Jack The Ripper’s latest crime in the hopes of finally putting an end to his reign of terror, but 1 of the 8 are not who they say. In fact, they’re Jack himself! No way! Yes way. Throughout the game, one player acts in the interest of the hidden Jack, keeping his identity secret by sowing confusion, while the other seeks to bring him to justice. Mr. Jack may sound exciting on paper, but iffy theming, nebulous player roles, and an overly restrictive design reduces its narrative to a slow, mismatched tug-of-war. The game is played on a heavily-abstracted map of London with sewer entrances and street lamps scattered throughout. At each of the 4 corners is an escape route for Jack, 2 of which are cordoned off. The starting locations of the 8 investigators, covered sewer entrances, lit street lamps, and cordons are all predetermined and do not vary game to game. Before the game begins, the Jack player draws an “Alibi” card telling them which investigator they are impersonating. The investigators then have exactly 8 rounds to uncover Jack’s identity and catch him. If they fail to do so, guess wrong, or he escapes they lose (as does…
If the potential to assist players in committing suicide by cop was the primary factor in the assessment of board games, Ca$h ‘N Guns would be the greatest ever made. Alas that is not the case, so I am compelled to express the depths of which I despise the embarrassment of its experience. This is a game that’s appeal hinges entirely on a single flimsy gimmick: pointing foam guns at each other. There is nothing else to say about it. If you think pointing foam guns at your friends for a half hour sounds like a hoot, you will probably like Ca$h ‘N Guns. Personally, I think it sounds like hell (apparently not always though, something made me buy the game after all…). Maybe if the game built around this gimmick wasn’t shamefully rudimentary and uninteresting I’d feel differently, but I mean of course it is — this is a game about pointing foam guns at each other. Ca$h ‘N Guns is a high concept, low effort flub that fails in every way to be expressive of its theme and has so little going for it I’m surprised it even exists, much less has a second edition. The first time my friends and I played Ca$h ‘N Guns was such a dismal experience I’m reluctant to drudge up its memory. Every single person at the table loathed it; we didn’t even finish the game. To this date, it’s one of the most viscerally negative reactions to a new game I’ve seen. But why? What about…