If they placed a cube, you must now also place a cube on a different space which cannot be the habitat according to your clue. The turn now passes to the player on your left. The game can be swinging against you, but what if you have more evidence tokens than your opponent? Do they abandon their plan to try and gain evidence counter parity, or go gung-ho into trying to win the game? For all I like about the game, it isn’t without problems. If you’re a fan of Cryptid, I would approach Urban Legends with caution. A Puzzle Race Example:'The habitat is on forest or swamp.' This player knows the habitat is on a forest space or a swamp space, so would place discs on those spaces. The player knows the habitat cannot be on any other terrain type, so would place cubes on spaces with any other terrain type. Still, I don’t find much of Cryptid conducive to a purely mathematical experience. The logical component is at odds with the difficulty of visualizing clues on the map. At the end of the day, I feel Cryptid doesn’t test our deduction abilities as much as our capacity to keep a bunch of rules in our brain and visualize them.

The artwork design is impeccable, with the translucent plastic markers and gorgeously illustrated action cards adding a layer of metropolitan mystery to the game, hats off to Kwanchai Moriya for their phenomenal work on bringing the hunt through the misty city to life. If you choose to search for the creature on your turn, take the pawn, place it on a spot on the board and declare a search, placing one of your discs immediately on the space (if one of your discs is already on the space you are searching, then you’ll place one somewhere else on the board that could also be the space.)The player you questioned must say whether the space could be the habitat according to their clue, and places either a disc or a cube of their color on the selected space, to indicate whether the creature could be there or not. Finally, I also feel like the wild cards could have been asymmetric to make them relevant to their player rather than being more of the same action. It doesn’t really feel like that much more of a bonus to have it, other than giving you an extra turn before having to replenish your hand. Final Thoughts The player that wins is the first to identify the sole space where the Cryptid could live. During play each player is carefully trying to gather as much information about their opponents clues and give away as little about theirs as possible. The reactionary nature of the game’s see-sawing actions considerably lengthens the playtime, as the moment your opponent takes their turn, any possible plays you may have been considering are most likely thrown out of the window. In many ways the game captures the bamboozlement of trying to catch a moth in your bedroom under a glass, with neither of you being entirely sure on what’s happening.

That is one of the greatest stunts I've ever seen, and surely one of the greatest stunts ever filmed. I don't even remember the movie, but I sure remember that train stunt. Then again, if you ask someone a question and they place a disc, you don’t have to place a disc of your own, but now maybe you’ve given everyone else just what they’ve needed to solve to puzzle. So maybe you ask someone about a space you know the creature can’t be based on your clue in hopes to both learn something and throw your opponents off your scent?After all, there’s no asymmetry to the information. Unless we are targeted over and over by other players, we know as much as everyone else. With this, Cryptid struggles to take advantage of its multiplayer aspect. It offers little tangible benefit to other logic puzzles, which can be played on our own and at our own pace. WORKMANSHIP To search, place a pawn on a space on the map which could be the habitat according to your clue, and declare a search. You must immediately place one of your own discs on the space. You've studied the footage, connected the dots, and gathered what meagre evidence you could. You're close--soon the whole world will know the truth behind the Cryptid. A group of like-minded cryptozoologists have come together to finally uncover the elusive creature, but the glory of discovery is too rich to share. Without giving away some of what you know you will never succeed in locating the beast, but reveal too much and your name will be long forgotten!

The player questioned must then answer yes or no by placing a cube on the space if, according to their clue, the creature could not be there, or a disc if the creature could. If they place a cube, you must then also place a cube in your color on an empty space that could not be the habitat according to your clue. Each player's clue either states an area where the creature can be found, or where it cannot be found, based on the terrain and structures on the board. During the game, you will ask each other questions with the aim of guessing each other's clues. The first player to correctly use all of the clues to find the habitat wins the game.

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Personally, I have yet to feel like I’ve needed to use paper and pen to help, but other players we have played with have found this very helpful. I recommend playing your first game without the use of paper and seeing how it goes. There are such a wide variety of clues that just because a player places a cube on, say, a water space, it doesn’t mean that the creature can’t be in the water, it may be because the water space is too far away from a structure, or a desert space, or perhaps an animal territory. You could write something down one turn, and then be erasing it just seconds later depending on how the game progresses. How does it play with two? Cryptid: Urban Legends’ biggest problem is its name. A lot of people are going to see the name in online stores, think “Oh boy, more Cryptid!”, and feel a sense of disappointment. That’s a result of the original game being so good, and this new upstart being so fundamentally different to its parent. While Urban Legends isn’t a deduction game, what it is, is a fantastic two-player duel, which really rewards time invested in it.

The one major plus point this gives the game is that it has a tiny footprint. You could play this on a train, in a pub, or maybe on the head of someone much shorter than you. It’s also a much shorter game than its forebear, which is good, because if you enjoy the game, you’re going to need to play it lots of times. Box of illusions You win the game by searching, which involves asking all players about one space. In turn, they will place either a cube or a disc. If every player places a disc you have found the Cryptid and are the winner. If anyone places a cube, the search stops and you must now place a cube elsewhere. So, search with care.Anniversary update!: I started making Cryptid Farm in 2019, and it's been a whole year since I uploaded Cryptid Farm in 2020, thanks for playing! This update adds lots of useful quality of life features, like bonus animations, a dynamically moving camera, a short tutorial, and some moderation settings in the Player List. It’s one of those games that feels like playing a classic, you know? They’re not great comparisons, but it’s like playing Chess, or Hive. It’s mano a mano abstract strategy, with a pretty coat of paint. The more you play, the more you learn, and the more you play against the same person, the bigger the meta game becomes. When you start being able to second-guess your opponent, it transforms from “How the hell do I play this?”, to “What’s that sneaky bugger up to this time??”. It takes several games of Cryptid to get used to the way it looks, and that can be off-putting to players who are already on the fence about a game this analytical. The terrain tiles, by necessity, feature a wide array of colors and textures as they need to easily represent differing types of topography such as water, deserts, forests, mountains, and swamps. That much is forgivable, because there’s really no way to make 5 tile-types look distinct and still mesh. It’s the minutia of the game that make an already challenging premise doubly so. The habitat is within three spaces of the specified color of structure. This clue includes spaces containing the specified color of structure. The type of structure is irrelevant for this clue. As fast as your brain will be moving to keep up with all the information, the game itself will take on a pace that is a seemingly-oxymoronic mix of brisk and languid. Individual turns may bog down as players stare, brows furrowed, trying to make sense of the flotsam of information they have, but the game itself never feels strained. The reason for that is, in as much as you choose where to guess and who to ask on your turn, the answers players give are public knowledge.