The original Chronicles of Crime remains my absolute favourite “solve the crime” style game. I’ve enjoyed all my plays of it and its expansions. So I was delighted when I found out that Chronicles of Crime – The Millennium Series was coming. At first I thought it would be “just” another expansion, with a new setting. But The Millennium Series offers much more than that.
If you’ve never played Chronicles of Crime I highly recommend that you check it out. It’s fun, engaging and it’s one of best app assisted games on the market. At its core it’s all about solving a crime, by investigating clues, talking to witnesses and visiting locations. All of this is done by scanning QR codes in the app. You can even combine the QR codes. So you can ask certain people about specific pieces of evidence or other people. It really is a lot of fun! On top of that the app also keeps track of time, and changes things as time progresses.
The old expansions Noir and Welcome to Redview both offered completely different settings, and Chronicles of Crime – The Millennium Series follows along those tracks and builds upon the concept. It might not come as a surprise that Chronicles of Crime – The Millennium Series isn’t just one game, but a series of games, spanning a (you guessed it) millennia. The 3 stand alone games in the series are called 1400, 1900, 2400. They take place in the year their title suggests. They can all be played as completely standalone games and comes with 4 cases to solve.
Chronicles of Crime: 1400
After having played the first case in Chronicles of Crime: 1400 (the first game in the Chronicles of Crime – The Millennium Series) I can tell you that I love it just as much as the original, if not more. It gave me and my wife the feeling of slowly unraveling the mystery that the game presented to us. I’ll will not spoil anything for you, but I was really impressed by how deep the experience and characters felt. We had many great discussions and theories about who did what and what their motivation was, and we loved every second of it.
What’s new?
Chronicles of Crime: 1400 offers a few new things in terms of gameplay elements. First off it introduces “vision cards”. You get to draw you get to draw these “visions cards” at the start of the game. They show you images of characters, situations and objects related to the crime. But you don’t know if they are things that have already happened or things that will happen in the near future. These add a lot of flavour and gives an extra element to talk about in the game. A small, but very cool, change to the “evidence board,” that now differentiates between evidence and clues in your possession and evidence and clues you’ve just heard of, is a nice addition. The other big change in Chronicles of Crime: 1400 is that you have a four legged friend. Not only does it feel great to have a faithful companion (yes I’m a dog person), but the greyhound is also very useful for tracking down certain people or locations that have been in contact with some of the evidence you find.
If you already enjoy Chronicles of Crime I’m sure you’ll love Chronicles of Crime: 1400 and the whole Chronicles of Crime – The Millennium Series. I, for one, would not hesitate to get my hands on it. If you have not yet tried the game (and you really should) this is a great starting point for you.
A prototype version of Chronicles of Crime: 1400 was supplied by Lucky Duck Games
