Pulp Detective is a solo card and dice game set in the mystery/detective genre of the 1930-40s  The art work is very thematic and reminds me of comics like The Shadow.

The setup is easy.  You pick a detective from a list of characters.  Each detective has a unique special power that you can use during play.  You have two other cards: one tracks which item is in your inventory and the other tracks stamina (aka health) and how many clues you have found.

You have a set number of hours to collect enough clues to confront the villain and solve the crime.  At the start of the round you select three cards from the investigation deck face down and pick one to play, one to discard, and one to put back into the deck.  There are three types of investigation cards and each type has a probability to grant specific rewards if you succeed.   

The card you play has a task (much like Elder Sign or Five Year Mission) that you use the dice to roll the correct symbols.  Here’s one of the tricks of this game: the dice have non-standard faces.  Each die has a multiples of the same symbol (e.g. the two eyes and two newspaper die) but each die is unique so pick which die to roll carefully.

Impressions and game play thoughts

This game is super difficult.  There is a lot of randomness in how the cards come out of the deck and what symbols turn up when you roll.  There’s a merciful mechanic where if you fail a card task you can take a token that counts for one of the dice faces you did roll during the attempt.  If you are successful and don’t need to roll all your dice on a card you can peek at the three cards that come at the start of the next round.  You need to pay close attention to the time tracker and take care picking what type of card to put into play each turn.  My first game I just grabbed whatever looked good and lost very quickly. 

The game is thematic and feels like an old Humphrey Bogart movie as you rough up an informant, then have a shoot out, then find a tied up dame who has a clue for you.  It’s just I had a terrible run of luck with the dice and could not get enough clues to find the bad guy for the final conflict.  I do look forward to trying until I solve the case.  The core game has three cases in the box.