New-ish Game Round-up: Identify Murderers, Run a Hospital, and Risk Blowing Up

Time to catch up on more older game announcements that have been languishing in my inbox:

• St. Noire is a murder mystery game from new publisher X2 Games and designers Zai Ortiz and Nolan Bushnell. Yes, that Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari.

The hook behind St. Noire, which was announced during San Diego Comic-Con in July 2019 and which I'm only now catching up on, is that it's "the world's first fully-voice acted board game designed for Amazon Alexa". In more detail:

Quote:

St. Noire features over a dozen voice actors and 2,500+ lines of spoken dialogue. In the game, players take on the role of a hard-boiled detective and are tasked with solving a murder in the mysterious small town of St. Noire. Playing either with your friends as a team, or going solo, you will need to question a cast of colorful suspects, search for clues around town, and use all your deductive reasoning to suss out which character is lying to you. St. Noire features multiple storylines and endings, immersive sound design and cinematic voice performances via Amazon Alexa.

To make sure no two games are alike, the identity of the killer is randomized on each play-through, making every new game feel fresh and unpredictable. A full play-through is estimated to take between fifteen and thirty minutes.

This promo video was published in March 2019, presumably to give a feel for what the game is like...if you listen to it with your eyes closed or while staring at game components:

More seriously, I'm left-handed and I always drink with my right hand, so apparently I'm a murder suspect as well. I'll continue writing this post from a now undisclosed location...

• In July 2019, Mercury Games announced that it had licensed Alban Viard's Clinic: Deluxe Edition and Clinic: Deluxe Edition – The Extension for release in North America in Q1 2020, with these titles including all of the bonus items from the Kickstarter that Viard ran in May 2019 (link).

• In August 2019, Pandasaurus Games announced that it had signed a new game from Elizabeth Hargrave without revealing anything about the game itself — and now I've done the same thing. Sigh.

• In February 2020, Steve Jackson Games will release a new edition of Le Boomb!, a silly game from Jean Vanaise that Mayfair Games first released in 2009. In the game, if you're holding the die, you roll it to see whether you pass it to someone else, keep it and roll again, or blow up. Last one alive wins.

Very silly indeed.