Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
My wife and I are always on the hunt for new one-shot crime/escape room/mystery games; I have reviewed so many that I’ve lost count. But after my experience with the first game in the Masters of Crime series, Masters of Crime: Vendetta, I was so impressed with the system, the storytelling, the use of various websites to flesh out the story, and the scoring elements. Vendetta was excellent, so when I had the chance to get more of the games in the series from our partners at KOSMOS, I raised my hand to get all four of the games I hadn’t tried immediately.
Over the next few months, I’m going to cover one game at a time…and the first one up was Masters of Crime: Rapture. Somehow, I think it was better than Vendetta. Read on to find out some of my spoiler-free thoughts about why that is!
It’s Tough Being a Star
Masters of Crime: Rapture is a one-shot crime-solving game, meaning that once you beat it, it is not replayable. However, the game can be fully reset, so I’m already excited to gift this to other friends in my network to experience the game for themselves. Although the box says it can be played by up to six players, this is really a solo or two-player game based on my experience.
I’ll also call out the play time—the box says 2-4 hours, and the instructions say to take a break at the two-hour mark. We got through Rapture in 2.5 hours, so the break might not be needed. We took our time reading all the cards out loud and sorting through the evidence, so your mileage may vary. This makes the Masters of Crime games a longer sit than some of the other mystery titles I have tried, but the volume of content in the box is pretty impressive.
In Rapture, players assume the role of a shady cartel boss who’s enjoying a life of luxury on the fictional Isla de Cubaidos, flush with cash thanks to a robust business in the drug trade. (These games feel a lot like being dropped into the shoes of a criminal in one of the Grand Theft Auto video games, which I like.) While enjoying a day off at one of the island’s beach bars, you overhear a local cop talking about the disappearance of one of the world’s biggest pop stars, a star who happens to be in town to shoot a music video. It doesn’t hurt that the star, Dayana, is originally from the island. (It also doesn’t hurt that the cop is on the take…which happens to be your payroll.)
Suddenly, you realize that you’ve got a problem—the business of blow has been very, very good to you, but missing pop stars might draw the visibility of cops both local and international. Despite the fact that you, yourself, are a criminal, it becomes vital to help investigate what happened to Dayana before the authorities show up to do more digging.
I love the setup. And over the course of a couple hours and maybe 70 cards’ worth of evidence, photos, visual clues on some of the cards, and a handful of suspects who all have some shady reasons why they might be behind the star’s disappearance, Rapture does an excellent job trying to cloud the view of the players as they investigate the crime. There are maybe a half-dozen fake websites that need to be scanned, a dozen envelopes that feature all manner of additional clues, and even a logic puzzle that needs to be solved to unlock additional cards.
“This might be the cleanest of the mystery games we have ever tried,” my wife said as we were close to wrapping up the case. I had to agree. It certainly helps to play a lot of games, but everything made sense to us because we were thorough in running through the cards. There were high fives when we used deduction to figure out a piece of the final solution. Despite the high volume of red herrings, we were able to sort things out by following the crumbs left all over the island.
KOSMOS Owns the Category
By the time we worked through a few final clues, we came up with the correct solution to the box’s crimes, and earned ourselves the game’s second-highest tier score. (We were one star away from a top-level rating.) Like Vendetta, Rapture gives players the chance to see what happened to everyone involved in the game’s story, even taking it one step further by letting players decide the fates of some of the more nefarious characters. (More nefarious than you, of course, but just barely, since you ARE a drug lord.)
The attention to detail in Rapture is excellent. This shouldn’t be a surprise, since KOSMOS is the publisher of the Exit: The Game series, including the Exit: The Game Advent Calendars that our family runs through every holiday season. KOSMOS has figured it out, and each of these Masters of Crimes games has been a winner. Knowing that we have three more to go through— Shadows, Incognito, and the latest release, Mosquito—is such a joy that my wife is already asking to run through the next one ahead of schedule.
I’m excited to wait. Like a great TV drama, Rapture does storytelling—particularly the kind of elevated, adult-appropriate dramas I love—particularly well for a board game. It’s on the expensive end for a one-shot game in this category (with an MSRP of about $25), but you’ll definitely get your money’s worth.
Give Masters of Crime: Rapture a look if date-night gaming is your thing!
Masters of Crime: Rapture details
- Designer: Lukas Setzke, Martin Student, Verena Wiechens
- Artists: N/A
- Publishers: KOSMOS, Noctis Verlag, Thames & Kosmos
- Release Date: 2021
- Player count : 1 - 6
- Age range : 14+
- Time range : 150 - 210 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Connections, Cooperative Game, Deduction, Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game, Storytelling
- BGG Geek Rating: 7.36333 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 3.5.
- More articles about Masters of Crime: Rapture.
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