Detective, now with the World's Greatest Detective
Portal Games has announced a new line of games in their Detective series, this time set in Gotham City. The first entry in this new series will be Batman: Everybody Lies, featuring an original narrative anchored in comics lore.
Following in the footsteps of Detective: A Modern Crime Boardgame, Batman: Everybody Lies will be a cooperative mystery solving game that blends physical and digital components. Two to four players will choose to take on the roles of instinctive journalist Warren Spacey, tenacious reporter Vicki Vale, brutish detective Harvey Bullock, or the cunning Catwoman. You will have a variety of locations to visit, leads to pursue, and clues to discover. These investigative steps will take a variable amount of time, and time is a finite resource. You cannot explore every available avenue, so you have to choose where to focus your efforts. As you traverse Gotham City, you can visit familiar locations like the Batcave, Arkham Asylum, Blackgate Penitentiary, and the Gotham City Gazette, and cross paths with Batman, The Penguin, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, Scarecrow, and more.
Batman: Everybody Lies adds a couple new wrinkles to the Detective system. First, your team has divergent motives, so Portal Games is introducing a hidden agenda mechanic to the Detective system, which assigns secret goals and unique win conditions for each player. Second, certain story beats in the narrative will be brought to life in Scenes - original comic book illustrations of the action!
Batman: Everybody Lies is designed by Ignacy Trzewiczek and Weronika Spyra, with art by Hanna Kuik and Maciej Simiński. It is scheduled to go on pre-order March 4 through Portal Games, with a retail release this summer.
