Marti and I are big fans of Foxtrot Games. We now own all but one of their titles. Randy Hoyt, the Owner, Producer, and Lead Developer of Foxtrot is a very nice gentleman. When we dropped by to pick up Spy Club at Origins, he recognized us and knew that we were Kickstarter backers of Spy Club, which was really sweet. In short, we love what they are doing with their games and how their brand is committed to appealing, diverse, and approachable games.

Designers: Randy Hoyt, Jason D. Kingsley

Artists: Dan Blanchett, Bartłomiej Kordowski, Malwina Kwiatkowska, Keith Pishnery, Helen Zhu

Publishers: Foxtrot Games, Renegade Game Studios

Spy Club is a Cooperative, Set Collection, and Action Point Allowance game where you and your friends are trying to solve neighborhood mysteries.

I greatly appreciate the thought put into how the character cards are put together. The art is great and, even though it is only a two to four player game, you have 8 options in regards to what character card you want to use.

The reason this is an abreviated unboxing is due to the fact that Spy Club includes a variable and replayable campaign mode using what is called their “Mosaic System.” I did not want to spoil any of this well thought out content for you, so this is the only picture of the campaign content featured in this unboxing.

Here is the central board, which situates the components that are important for all players to see: the escape marker, movement deck, etc. The central board is also double sided, one side is the standard difficulty level and the other is advanced difficulty level. Another neat production touch throughout the game is how components are assembled as puzzle pieces. You can see a faint outline of how it fits together in the above picture.

You can also see the puzzle piece aesthetic with the player boards, which is where each player assembles their three clue cards.

Other neat components contained within Spy Club are the cards, the card tray, suspect pawn, and player aid cards. The cards are double sided, which is very neat, and adds a ton of replayability into their Mosaic campaign system, and for the base game overall. The card tray design is a nice thematic touch. The suspect pawn reminds me of Carmen Sandiego and the double sided player aides are always welcomed by me in any game. The font on them is fairly big and I like how they have highlighted things to make them stand out.

Overall, I am quite excited to get this game to the table and contribute towards solving all of the neighborhood mysteries. You can tell that great thought and care was put into the creation of the game from its components, to its mechanisms, and lastly, to its art.

Another thing to note is that their is no difference between the game that Kickstarter backers will be recieving and what will be available via retail. There is no fear of missing out (AKA FOMO) attached to this game. I do still feel some pride in the fact that we helped Kickstart this project. I am very happy that we were able to bring this game home from Origins.

Kickstarter backers that didn’t opt for Origins pickup should be getting their copies of Spy Club within the next couple of weeks, and it hits general retail on July 11th (according to the Renegade website).

Game On!

Sarah – The Confuzzld Meeple