Almost Innocent
Almost Innocent Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
- 5 Player ability cards
- 5 Player screens
- 41 Solutions cards
- 7 Crime
- 7 Scene
- 7 Evidence + 2 Special
- 7 Offender + 2 Special
- 7 Victim + 2 Special
- 7 Crime solution cards
- 7 Victim solution cards, 2 special solution cards
- 7 Offender solution cards, 2 special solution cards
- 7 Scene solution cards
- 7 Evidence solution cards, 2 special solution cards
- 5 Note Taking Sheets
- 5 Erasable markers
- 1 Black, White and Green special investigation token
- 3 Almost Innocent tokens
- 12 Double-sided investigation tokens
- 1 Active player token
- 1 Campaign book
- 1 Rule book
- 6 Scenario boards, double-sided
Queen module
- 1 Queen movement card
- 1 Queen movement die
- 1 Queen standee
Setup of the Base Game
- Choose a scenario and locate the corresponding story and setup instructions in the story book. We highly recommend to start with scenario one and progress through the story at your own pace.
- Choose your level of difficulty (Easy, Standard, Master).
- Prepare a number of Investigation tokens and Almost Innocent tokens as indicated in the chosen scenario's setup instructions.
- Form a deck for each color/type of solution cards, each stack depending the scenario.
- Each player chooses a note taking sheet, a player screen and a pen.
- Give each player their player ability cards (if specified by the scenario).
Once the setup is complete, each player draws one solution card per color and secretly takes note of the solutions on their note taking grid (see "Taking Notes") and also notes the positions of the "No Clue".
Note: The setup may vary depending on the scenario you play or the modules you include. This may for example modify the types of solution cards needed or certain player abilities. You find the required modules in the module section of the rulebook.
Tips
Tip: Before starting a new scenario make sure that every player:
- Marked the "no-clues" on their sheet
- Marked the solution cards they received on their sheet correctly
- Marked the location of "big-tiles"
This is essential, because an error in marking this down (one column or row) will very likely disturb the game for all players.
Core Gameplay
Setup: Receive Solutions
At the beginning of the game every player draws one card from each of the solution card decks.
These solution cards make up the solution of the player to their left. They must help this player to find their secret combination.
Players are not allowed to show their solutions to other players or give any hints about them except by asking the specified questions while spending investigation tokens.
At the same time, they have must try to find own combination that is only known by the player to their right.
One of the many possible combinations in Almost Innocent: Malicious Mouse + Crooking Curse + Tome + Bribery + Keep.
Tips
Tips: About Table Talk
You may adapt the amount of legitimate "table talk" to the difficulty you choose:
- Easy: You may indicate to the other players what type/color clues you are confused about and which you have already solved.
- Standard: You may only indicate if you have completed your solution yet (and are ready for the game end) or not.
- Master: You are not allowed to talk about your progress at all.
A Player's Turn
- The active player asks one of the two possible questions and puts the investigation token next to the corresponding row or column:
- A. "How many clues relate to my case in this row/column?"
- B. Is my Victim (or Offender, or Evidence, or Scene, or Crime) in this row/column?"
- All players answer the stated question in turn.
- When all players have answered the question and taken their notes, the next player continues (the active player token is passed to the next player as well).
Asking Questions
The players take turns in placing one of their investigation tokens next to a row or column that does not yet have an investigation token. They are allowed to ask only one of the two following questions:
Question "A": "How many clues relate to my case?"
Question "B": "Is my Victim (or Offender, or Evidence, or Location, or Crime - Only one clue type/color can be selected!) in this row/column?"
The player to their right must answer this question with a number from 0 to 5 (question A) or Yes/No (question B). The players are not allowed to give any other answers or hints relating to their secret clues.
After this question is answered, each player takes turns answering the same question posed by player 1. This way everyone receives their own answer to the question that was asked by player 1.
Example of Play
Example: Markus, Lisa, Philippe and Arnaud are playing. Markus asks "How many clues in column three relate to our case?" Lisa answers "2", Philippe says "1", Arnaud says "1", and Markus says "0".
The players keep track of these answers with the help of the note taking sheet (see "Taking Notes"). Also the players are allowed to take any further notes they like, whatever might help them to solve the case.
Note: In some scenarios there are be two types of investigation tokens for Question A and Question B (indicated by flipping the investigation token). This will limit how many questions of each type can be asked.
For example, in scenario 5 the players on Master difficulty the players have 10 investigation tokens but can only ask 7 times for question A and 3 times for question B tokens.
Taking Notes
During the investigation, the players take notes via the grid on their note taking sheet.
They note the responses given by the player to their right in the respective column or row.
For this, the players note the solution that they have for the player to their left in the grid ("S" to the right) and mark the no-clue fields (shaded spaces to the right).
Further they continuously take note of the number of solutions that are given by the player to their right for question A (0-5 in the "Answers" section) or the reply to Question B "Yes/No" (Y, N, "offender", "victim" to the right).
This allows them to exclude certain clues ("X" to the right) or identify them "0" to the right.
The players are allowed to take any additional notes and look at the reference sheet to identify their clues.
Solving Combinations / End of the Game
Once the players have used up all their investigation tokens, then they must attempt to solve their combination of clues.
The players may decide to solve sooner, however, they must all solve at the same time and only have one attempt solving the game.
Once the players attempt to solve their combinations, they take turns announcing their suspected clues colour by colour.
First, all offender clues are solved, then all victims, all crimes, all evidence and all scene clues.
They take clockwise turns to solve their combination by announcing their suspected clue out loud. The player to their right answers with "yes" or "no".
- If the answer is correct, the player to their left continues with their next guess.
- If the answer is not correct, the players immediately lose one "Almost Innocent token".
- If the answer is not correct and the players have no more "Almost Innocent Tokens", they immediately lose the game together.
- After losing an Almost Innocent Token the incorrect player must make another attempt to solve for the same clue considering the additional information provided by the negative response.
In any case, the players must solve all clues correctly. Almost Innocent Tokens do not allow them to skip or reveal a clue. If the players solve all clues correctly, they win the game and may progress to the next page of the scenario book.
Modules
Five different modules can be added to the game to expand the game experience. The required modules are specified on each page of the scenario book.
By progressing through the story book you are introduced to these modules one at a time. We recommend playing the book one scenario at a time and looking up the modules as the story progresses.
However, if you are an experienced player already, you may decide to (re)play certain scenarios as you like or modify their requirements.
Reduced Type of Clues
To make the game easier for new players, some scenarios use a reduced number of clue types (colors) for the first few rounds of the games. The players then only draw a reduced number of solution cards, one per type/colour of token in the game. E.g. in scenario 1 only Victim, Scene, and Evidence are used, Offender and Crime are left out.
This makes the game much easier for beginners.
Limited Question Types
By default, players can freely choose to use the investigation tokens to either ask question A ("How many clues relate to my case?") or B ("Is My Victim (Offender, Evidence...) in this row/column?").
However, in many scenarios the use of investigation tokens is limited by question type. In these scenarios the setup specifies how many of each type of investigation token are available during that game.
For example, in scenario 3 depending on the chosen difficulty players have anywhere from 9 to 5 "Question A" investigation tokens and 3 "Question B" Investigation tokens.
9 markers next to the board, 6 face up with "A/number" and 3 face up with "B/ type".
Player Abilities
Throughout the scenarios more player abilities are added that make hard game setups easier and give you additional strategic options. Each player ability is associated with a fixed character. The players may choose which character and thus which ability to use for this game.
In the scenarios the players must "unlock" their abilities by solving certain scenarios. On each scenario page it is indicated what abilities are available. The players take the corresponding ability cards and return them to the box once they have been used in the game.
2 players: If you are playing with 2 players, the players gain one additional player ability from a character that is not in the game (as long as this ability is allowed in the scenario). Either of the players may decide to use this character during the game.
The following abilities are in the game
C1 - Din: The Sage
When: Anytime, once a game.
Effect: You may pick one player (this can be yourself). This player draws three unused cards from the solution card stacks in any combination. These three solution cards are not in the game and the player can cross them off their note taking grid. Then, the player chooses one of the three solution cards and reveals it to the other players.
Note: The player is not allowed to talk about the other two solution cards they saw.
C7 - Teor: The Streetwise
When: Anytime.
Effect: The Streetwise starts with two special investigation tokens, a black and a white one. They can pick a player. This play may use one of these markers to indicate the following: Placing the white marker indicates that in this 2x2 grid, there is at least one solution.
Placing the black marker indicates that in this 2x2 grid there are no clues. The respective player to their left crosses this clue off their tracking sheet.
C3 - Edd: Investigator
When: Instead of your turn.
Effect: Instead of your regular turn, you may ask one of the two alternative questions:
- Is my offender an animal?
- Is my evidence a liquid?
All players answer the question with either "yes" or "no". In case of doubt, these are the correct answers:
- Animal: crow, badger, squirrel
- Non-Animal: witch, king, ogre, giant
- Liquid: tea, potion, drink
- Non-Liquid: dress, compass, pocket watch, key
C6 - Okra: The Crack Shot
When: Instead of your turn.
Effect: Once per game, the Crack Shot may use their turn to ask any question (A or B) for a row/column that was already used.
They use their special investigation token instead of a regular investigation token.
C4 - Valia: The Queen's Champion
When: Instead of your turn.
Effect: One time in the game The Queen's Champion can use their ability to move the Queen token to any space of their choice and ask a special question: "How many clues is the Queen currently touching?"
Each player then gives a number between 0 and 4. This indicates if the 2x2 tiles below the Queen are currently touching 1, 2, 3, 4 or no correct clues.
Example: Philippe and Lisa are playing. It's Philippe' turn. Philippe moves the Queen to the center, so that she is currently touching the scam, the spicy tea, clumsy wizard and the church.
As the clumsy wizard is the victim that Lisa is looking for, he uses his ability to ask the special question and gives the number "1". Lisa notes on her sheet that one of the four clues must be hers.
Then she also tells Philippe "2" which indicates to him that two of his clues are within this 2x2 area."
Queen Marker
For this module, the mini and a six sided die are added to the game.
The Queen tries to disturb the players. She always starts the game in the center of the board as displayed above.
This way she "controls" the two rows and columns that intersect her position. In the example to the right, the rows 3+4 and the columns C+D are "controlled" by the Queen. If the players want to ask a question for any of the rows/columns controlled by the Queen, they have to discard one additional investigation token of their choice. If they cannot discard this additional token, they cannot investigate the respective row/column.
Example: Lisa wants to investigate row three. This line is controlled by the Queen. Tom decides to ask the question anyways and asks question B "How many of my clues are here." The players place one investigation token next to row three and discard one additional token. They decide to discard a B token as the additional token.
Queen Movement
At the end of each player's turn roll the die and move the queen according to the compass below.
Once a player's turn is completed, the player rolls the 6 sided die. Depending on the result of this the Queen moves as follows:
- The Queen moves up
- The Queen moves down
- The Queen moves left
- The Queen moves right
- & 6. The players decide where to move the queen. However, the queen must move!
If a 1-4 is rolled but the Queen cannot currently move into that direction, the Queen stays where she is.
Overall, the Queen has 9 possible positions on the board that she can occupy. The queen can never move diagonally.
The queen only blocks the specified columns and rows. She does not have an effect on the special question options of the Din (C1), Teor (C7), Edd (C3) or Valia (C4) but she does disturb the questions of Okra (C6), and the players would have to discard one additional token.
Large Clues
In these scenarios large clue tiles are present on the game board:
When a question A or B is asked, the large tokens each count as members of two columns/rows.
For example, if the Clumsy Wizard is the victim of a player.
The question "Is my victim in row" 5 or 6 would return "Yes" both for row 5 and for row 6. Also the Clumsy Wizard would be counted in both rows when giving the number of clues.
Note: Independent of their larger size, the large clues are still an ordinary clue tile. They only count as one clue whenever counted, regardless of how much space they occupy.
Scenarios
To experience the full story of the game with gradually increasing difficulty, we recommend to follow the scenarios by using the story book and scenario sheets.
To start the scenarios, open the corresponding page of the story book and follow the setup instructions there.
On each scenario in the campaign book you find a short story teaser and setup instructions for the corresponding scenario. On the scenario board you find the grid of clues which is used for this scenario.
Once you have successfully completed a scenario you note your progress and continue with the next scenario page.
Although we recommend this specific order in its increasing difficulty, you may replay or skip a scenario as you like.
Later, you can continue where you left off or freely replay any scenario you like.
Game Concept
Your party set out on a heroic quest to find the lost crown of the Emperor of Oshra.
However, on your last evening at the local tavern, your party drank too much spicy tea, and things got a little out of hand.
The next morning you find yourselves the chief suspects of a series of horrible crimes. But you are totally innocent, of course! Can you solve the crimes and identify the true offenders? Only if all of you can prove your innocence, can you continue your heroic quest!
In Almost Innocent the players must work together to find a specific combination of clues for each player in order to win the game. Each player must find one unique combination. Every player has the solution of the player to their left, while relying on the help of the player to their right to solve their own crime.
The players take turns asking questions based on the lines and columns of a 6x6 grid of clues. When the players run out of questions (investigation tokens) they must solve their cases. Only if all players can solve their combination correctly, will the players win the game.
Credits
Edited by Kolossal Games
Co-created by BFF Games
Designer: Philippe Attali
Illustrator: Satoshi Matsuura
Developer: BFF Games
Artistic Director: Maxime Erceau
Graphic Design: Florian Roos / Chris Byer
Production: Zongxiu Yao-Charpentier
Project Manager: AJ Lambeth