Grey Fox Games Deception: Murder in Hong Kong vs Libellud Dixit (2021 edition)

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is the social deduction pick for a big room. Designed by Tobey Ho and republished by Grey Fox Games, it seats 4 to 12, and roles are dealt at random each round: investigators, one murderer, and one forensic scientist who knows the answer but cannot speak. With 6 or more players an accomplice and a witness join in.

Every investigator sits behind four means cards and four clue cards. During a short eyes-closed phase the murderer quietly picks one of each from their own display. The forensic scientist then guides the table by placing markers on scene tiles, such as a cause of death or a location, while the murderer argues for the wrong suspect. Each investigator has a single badge for one accusation, so a bad guess costs them.

The box holds 200 clue cards, 90 means cards, 32 scene tiles and 12 role cards, which keeps rounds from repeating. The costs are real. The forensic scientist spends the round silent, which suits some players and bores others. The murder theme and 14+ rating rule out young kids, and laying out 12 displays needs a large table.

Dixit is the party game that works when the table spans an eight-year-old and a grandparent, because nobody needs trivia, vocabulary or a poker face. Each turn one player is the storyteller. They pick an illustrated card from a hand of six and give a clue, which can be a word, a phrase, a song lyric or a sound. Everyone else slips in the card from their own hand that best fits the clue, the cards are shuffled and revealed, and the table votes on which one was the storyteller's.

The scoring is what makes it clever. If every player or no player finds the storyteller's card, the storyteller scores nothing, so a clue has to be specific enough for some and vague enough for others. Decoy cards earn points for the people who played them.

This 2021 edition ships a board, eight wooden pawns, eight voting dials and 84 oversized cards by Marie Cardouat, and lifts the count to 8. Two limits matter. The game shines at 5 or more and feels thin at 3. Regular groups learn the 84 cards within a few dozen plays, so expansions become the real ongoing cost.