At this point, the leading player can play one false evidence card if they choose, and then play moves to the right. Every card has a printed value from one to three, and you can say the total of the numbers on the cards you wish to offer up for auction. There is a small amount of flavour text on the evidence cards too, which is a nice touch, although largely irrelevant.

But first, let’s look at how you’ll carry out your investigation, because it’s about as easy to undertake as a genuine homicide case. The artwork on the cards and case trackers is very good and doesn’t feature any gory images, so is suitable for all players. Select a card at random (without looking) from the Weapon, Location, Motive and Suspect piles and place them, without anyone seeing what is on the cards, into the Confidential Folder – this folder now holds the solution to identify the killer.The game is played until a player guesses the answers correctly or all players are knocked out through wrong guesses. If they are wrong about any of the four cards, they are out and the game continues for all other players with that player out of the game.

This continues until one player feels like they’ve narrowed down the possibilities enough to take a stab - sorry, poor choice of words - at the solution. The stuffed animal could preferably have been double bagged inside the packaging though, since the package had a small rip and thus the toy was in risk of damage. I’ve played the requisite rounds of Monopoly which have dragged to the point of family blowouts and beyond. Game includes: 1 Casefile Gameboard, 4 Case Trackers, 4 Dry-Erase Markers, 44 Cards, 1 Deception Die, 1 Confidential Folder, and Complete Instructions. Larger items, primarily outdoor or ride-on products are shipped directly from Hamleys partners and may take longer to arrive.The idea is to collect or eliminate enough pieces of evidence by asking questions, trading evidence cards and leading other players down the wrong path, to make an educated guess to who the killer is, where the murder happened, what weapon was used to commit the murder and what the motive was.

All players will have one turn like this until it gets back to the first player again, who at this point, will roll the deception die.But I’ve got to say that Case File is the first time in living memory I’ve ever intentionally thrown a match just to stop playing. Should I play my ability cards to give myself an edge, thereby revealing that card, or lie to my rivals but risk losing that card to one of their wildcards on their turn?

When that rulebook is complicated, or long, it can be a bit of a chore to learn the game and teach everyone else. It would have been interesting if the game had come with a number of different cases from the podcast, and you can chose a random one each game to try and solve. Based on the hit podcast of the same name, this seedy, self-branded “strategy game” Case File Truth and Deception (it is certainly not, your first clue that this was developed by people who fundamentally don’t understand the concepts they’re working with right out of the gate) sees players take on the role of detectives attempting to solve a murder mystery, exchanging evidence in shady deals and pulling the wool over their rivals’ eyes, bribing and lying to one another in equal measure to uncover the truth. When it comes down to it, I’d gain exponentially more from listening to the actual podcast than I would playing the game based on it, too. Or, to trick others into thinking they don't have that card, when in fact they do, so they start to think they may be in the folder.Put yourself in the detective’s shoes and trade evidence with other players to get closer to the truth. But when a rulebook is incomprehensible and flat out omits rules altogether, it’s more than a slog; it’s unforgivable.