Archeo-Logic - A Competitive Deduction Board Game, Locate & Map Out A Hidden City, Ages 12+, 1-4 Players

[This review is for the "Archeo-Logic" board game]The game seems a bit overwhelming at first when you open it. Lots of pieces and a large instruction manual. But it's an interesting game once you take a few minutes to wrap your brain around it.Basically, the goal of the game is to learn the layout of the buildings (Tetris-looking pieces) on the map. You do that by "spending time" to ask questions and receive clues back about the layout. You keep track of your clues and the first to guess the layout wins. There's an optional app to use to play and even a solo mode! I have played once so far without the app with someone else, and again in solo mode with the app. I also tried one of the daily puzzles in the app, for which you don't need the full setup.THE POSITIVES: there's a solo mode!! I always want to play games and my partner doesn't; now I can play alone. And there's a ton of cards in the box, so even if I play them all, I'll never remember the layouts. The notepaper pad you get is wonderfully large, too. Not 20 sheets. More like 200. The game pieces/cards/etc are nicely made and sturdy, and they send you tiny plastic bags for all the little parts. The fact that you can do harder or easier games (based on the number of starting clues you agree to use) is very friendly to playing this game with people of different skill levels. And I really like the added option of the app and the extra puzzles.RANDOM BONUS THOUGHT: if you wanted to play this with a friend from afar who also has the game, you can totally do it. Like remote chess. Choose the same card, hop on your Zoom meeting, and play.THE NOT-AS-GREAT: the names of the things in the game are hard to keep track of. Maybe the the translators weren't native English speakers? Because we gave up trying to refer to some of the things by their given names. "Risk-free box", "fire trap box", and "sharp trap box", for example, and just called them the "blue square", "orange triangle", and "pink swirl". Maybe if they were called something a little more simple like "safe", "fire trap" and "sharp trap" would we have been able to remember them more? I think that's part of what made the instructions difficult to follow at first, too -- it's very wordy.Also, I wish you didn't have to flip the clue card every turn and/or there was a way to clip it into the archeoscope. It was always fiddly trying to make sure it was lined up properly, especially with having to move it around so we could each see it on our turns.But I wouldn't say that any of those are big enough problems to cause an issue or make you not want to play the game; on my second game through it was already easier to know how to quickly line the card up to the scope, and once you grasp the premise of the questions/time/moving around the board, it's not anything I'd even think about again.

I try to give my students real life examples and this game has been a helpful tool for that!

This is a fun game of deduction for tetris-type piece placement based upon limited starting clues, and various "time"-cost questions. To help orient the pieces, there are 8 total "trap" symbols of 2 different types. Questions available to investigate include the following:- How many pieces are found across a specific row or column of the board? (Answers will range from 1 to 5)- Which of this specific piece's tiles are found across a specific row or column of the board? (Answers will display between 0 and 3 matching tiles, but not the order)- How many tiles are completely uncovered by any tetromino across a specific row or column of the board? (Answers will range from 0 to 3)And so on. The more information a question reveals about the board, the greater the number of "time" or turns it takes to perform. The time aspect encourages the optimization of the questions asked, and logic and deduction to identify the correct orientation of all tetrominos according to the puzzle.The game comes with 28 possible solutions to seek, so there is a fair amount of replayability. Once getting the hang of the rules and the play, I agree with the estimated time of 40 minutes per game. The game lists that it is good for players 12+. This might be a stretch because while a 12-year-old will be capable of understanding the rules, I'm not sure that it would capture the attention of a child that young. I'm glad to have played this game with other adults rather than with my early-teen daughters.Overall, I love this kind of logic and deduction in a game, and I love competition with my friends, so I really enjoyed this game. One of my friends often suggested that it is very similar to a Turing Test board game, but I haven't played that so I can't make a proper comparison. Anyway, I'd recommend this Archeo-Logic game to others who enjoy similar styles of competitive logic game.

I tend to love deduction puzzles and games, and really enjoy Turing Machine. I actually didn't realize it was the same designer at the time I ordered this, but it certainly has a similar puzzly feel. It takes a bit to get acquainted with the system and how to use the wheel device, but it's actually fairly simple once you understand it. I've actually only played this solo (or co-operative) and it works great in that format. Running through a puzzle takes 15-20 minutes and is fairly relaxing. I feel like there's enough physical puzzles in the box to keep you going for quite awhile, but I appreciate that there's more available online if needed.Granted, this is not a game I would thrown in front of anyone. Similar to Turing Machine and a lot of other puzzle deduction games, this will likely either really click with you or be a miss. I think a lot of people will enjoy the puzzle aspect, but dealing with the components and understanding the overall system will turn some people off, I'm afraid. In those cases, simply including others by doing an open co-op puzzle is a great way to share the fun while you manage the scoring and minutia.I still want to try the multi-player at some point and I have a few friends I think this will work well with, but until then I'm very happy to just get this out on my own and bop through a few solo puzzles from time to time. I might even like this more than Turing Machine as it feels less fiddly in regard to components, and the learning curve feels lower, but both are fantastic puzzles that I thoroughly enjoy.