This week I want to talk about one of my favorite new games from this year, but one that flew under the radar when it was released in May. Since the pumpkin spice latte is out in the wild and everyone is preparing for Spooky season a little early, let’s talk about Spectral by Ryan Courtney, where we go gem hunting in a haunted mansion. Spectral bills itself as a deduction game, and that’s true, but it has a unique blend of mechanisms in addition to deduction that I think put some people off who typically like that genre. By deduction game I mean something like Clue,  a game where players use deductive logic to find out a specific answer. Spectral has some of that for sure, but answers aren’t always as specific, and there is some luck involved which is often not what deduction fans are looking for.

But first let me describe how the game works in a bit more detail. In Spectral players place out investigators in the spaces between 16 cards arrayed in a 4 x 4 grid face down. When placing investigators between a card you are doing two things at once. 1.) you are claiming that spot, and if you are next to any gems at the end of the game you get a portion of those findings for being next to the card, and 2.) you get to look at one of the two cards you are in between and learn some information about somewhere else in the grid where a curse or gem is. Critically, cards that you see never tell you about that card. Players quickly scrawl this information in a charming investigation booklet so they can puzzle out their next move between other players’ turns. Gems are how you score points, but curses are the most spicy part of the design. Any investigators next to a curse are destroyed, and can’t claim any gems that are adjacent to them. You may think you are next to the same lucrative space as another player, but because of a curse that is adjacent to you, but not them, your bid is lost.

Early on, when the grid is a complete mystery players are only doing this to gain information. But as they learn more they may want to claim specifically juicy spots next to multiple gems, and therefore the claiming becomes more important than the information. When players place a piece it is essentially a bid, like in an auction game. Players can place out any number of their 18 investigator pieces. In order to beat another player’s bid and claim the same spot opponents must play double the number of investigators that are already there. Early on players are placing out single investigators, but as they learn information players may be willing to throw more and more investigators to firm up a claim or kick someone out of a key location. And you can always pass to wait and see where other players go but if all players pass sequentially the game ends.

So what kind of information are players learning? There are four different kinds of cards and each row has three cards that are about where gems are, and one that is about where curses are. The first clue describes where a curse or gem is two away diagonally in the grid. This points to a specific spot as only one location can fit that description. The second clue states that a curse/gem is two away clockwise, either in the inner circle of 4 cards, or the outer circle of 12. The third clue points to a card diagonal from it within that quadrant of four cards. And the 4th clue points to a card that is on the other side of it across the horizontal axis, as if you were folding over the board and it matches its mirror image.

Most critically with these clues is that each row of cards is internally consistent. It is not a setup of 16 cards randomly placed among the 4 x 4 grid. Rows A, B, C and D are each the same four card every time. So if you know even one card in a row you can start making guesses about what the other cards are and what that implies in terms of where things are in the grid. That’s the puzzle in terms of the cards themselves, but the second layer is the social deduction of why players are bidding high in certain places and maybe not treading anywhere near others. Even if you don’t know where a curse is by the middle of the game you might be able to tell by an absence of bids near a card.

The game is great, but I can see why it hasn’t resonated with traditional deduction game fans. It is less deterministic than Clue. In Clue the process of elimination is perfect information. If the candlestick is in one room, it can’t be in another. In Spectral there can be three gems and a curse on the same card. Knowing where a gem is does not tell you that a curse ISN’T there. You are rewarded for the deduction part, but there’s luck involved in what you see vs what other players see before the game ends. I personally think this trade-off of luck vs perfect information is worth it for a few reasons. For one, the game clocks under 30 minutes, and I am generally ok with quite a bit of luck in shorter games in general. For another I think the unique blend of mechanisms set this game apart from other deduction games, and makes it quite a bit more light and interactive. Bidding based on a growing confidence in the information you’ve gathered, combined with paying attention to what other players are doing gives the game a different feel vs other deduction games that are very much heads down puzzles.

On top of all that it plays to 5 players seamlessly and comes in a very small box. Bitewing games has a winner on their hands with this one, and hopefully this review can help more folks discover this unique gem.