Have you ever been a private detective trying to solve a case before competing interests do? And have you ever followed up on a lead just so you could place evidence on a suspect so you can influence whether they are guilty or innocent? I have, and you can too! If you act now you can purchase Android for the low low price of whatever Amazon is selling it at.
In Fantasy Flight Games‘ Android you are one of 5 characters trying to solve a randomized murder. To do this you follow up on leads that allow you to unravel the conspiracy or collect evidence to apply to a suspect. Along the way you gain favors that can be used to buy various items on the board and cards that can help in your investigation or hinder another player.
During your turn you start with a base of 6 actions. These actions include moving to various locations, playing a card (which may require more actions based on the card info), following up on a lead, play or discard cards, or use the current locations unique action. All of these choices lead to a complex turn that can make you second guess your decisions on every action, or another player just completely destroying your carefully laid plans by throwing out a twilight card to #*%! you over like the scumbag he is (I’m not bitter. Really I’m not).
Normally when you have such complex turns it is a good idea to go over your strategy before your next turn hits so you can keep the game moving quickly, but within Android this can burn you. If you don’t pay attention to what the other players are doing or if you don’t pay attention to their individual plot cards you can find yourself opening up paths to allow their victory or even killing the wrong suspect because they used a card to change their guilty suspect (Still not bitter).
The box lists a play time of 2-4 hours which jives with my experience. This may seem like way too long to sit around a table playing the same game, but I felt the choices I was making during each turn were different enough that it never became stagnant. It wasn’t until around turn 10/11 of 12 that I started to feel the need to finish up. I was actually surprised by how well Android was able to hold my attention throughout the whole experience.
If you have friends that are willing to read through a 47 page rulebook and spend a few hours trying to dick each other over (definitely a euphemism) in the hopes of getting those precious victory points, Android is well worth the time investment.
You can check out the board and components here on BoardGameGeek.com
