At first glance, MicroMacro: Crime City looks like Where's Waldo? in a game box. The components of the game are minimal: 120 case cards that are divided into 16 envelopes, a magnifying glass, and an incredibly detailed black-and-white city map that measures 75x110 cm² (roughly 30"x43").
Here's a tiny sampling of the map:
And the entire thing with people included for scale:
To start a case, one player — the lead investigator — reveals the top card from that case's envelope:
Then reads the back of the card and shows it to everyone:
Thereby revealing the top of the next card and your initial task:
Once you discover where you think the pub is, you identify its location — using the grid coordinates on the perimeter of the map — then the lead investigator looks at the back of the card to confirm this detail. If correct, the lead investigator will read and reveal that card, then you'll be off to find something else. The introductory case doesn't have a difficulty level, but the other fifteen cases — such as "Leo Moustache", "Death From Above", and "The Masked Avenger" — are rated from 1 to 5 stars in difficulty.
If you want to get a taste of MicroMacro: Crime City, you can play a sample case — "Hot Chips" — on an excerpt of the map on this dedicated website. Happy sleuthing!