Mr. Jack Pocket
Jack the Ripper hides again – this time in your pocket!
The scene is familiar. Gentleman Jack is loose in the streets, disguised as one of many innocents in the streets of Whitechapel. The investigators hunt him, eliminating the suspects one at a time, to reveal the villain’s true identity before he escapes into the night!
In Mr. Jack Pocket Edition, two players return to the scene of the crime, one to unmask the vile Mr. Jack, and the other to escape into the night. But this time, the game is all new. Suspects are printed on street tiles, and turned to hide their faces from the investigators. Four special action tiles will allow both players to maneuver the tiles and the investigators, one player trying to spot the elusive killer, and the other desperate to hide from sight.
Mr. Jack Pocket Edition is the portable version of the acclaimed board game for two players. It’s still the ultimate game of cat-and-mouse, but all new and compact enough to fit in your pocket. Breathe new life into an old favorite, and hunt a murderer through darkened alleys before he slips away one more time.
User Reviews (4)
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Mr. Jack Pocket is true to its name. The game itself fits inside the square box, roughly 11 cm wide (that’s 4,5″ for you pesky types out there who cannot embrace the world standard called SI units), so it’s easy to bring anywhere. The game itself is an assymetrical 2 player game where one player tries to find the identity of Jack the Ripper and the other player tries to conceal the identity until the time runs out for the good guys.
As you can see from the image presenting the game here the Whitechapel district is made up from 9 square tiles (each with a suspect on top of it) in a 3×3 pattern. Most of them have streets in a T-shape, effectively blocking line of sight to one side of the tile. And the main thing in this game revolve around line of sight, the player controlling the good guys have three persons circling the play area (Holmes, Watson and their loyal dog Toby). Each turn they will peek inside whitechapel, and depending on their positions and how the tiles are turned they will see some of the suspects. The player controlling Jack must then tell if Jack is visible or not, making it possible to cross out a number of suspects (flipping the tiles to the other side where there is no suspect). So, if the good player have his/her way the detectives will observe exactly half of the suspects each turn to be as efficient as possible in eliminating possible culprits.
This is where the real brain burner comes in, before the observation phase each player can do two actions. There are four action tiles that are randomly flipped (they have different actions on each side), and whoever is starting player (switched each turn) will pick the first action, then the other player will pick two out of the remaining three, and the starting player will get the last one. Actions include moving the detectives, rotating tiles or swapping tiles. There’s even an action where either player can grab an alibi for an innocent victim. It turns out that calculating what the other player can do with diferent combinations of actions and what to do to maximize your chances is really hard. I like that aspect greatly, and I found that not being the starying player is often the most interesting role.
One thing that adds a bit of a twist is that even though the good guy have 8 turns to find Jack, some things (like not seing Jack or grabbing alibi cards) will accumulate hour glass tokens. If Jack manage to collect 6 of them he/she wins before the 8 rounds are over. This means that the Jack player prefers if Jack is not seen, and of course that could also be used as a clue by a good detective player. It’s a great little touch that adds more flavour to the game.
While I have not yet played this as much as I would love to I highly recommend it. This game is a gem!
Mr Jack Pocket is a clever little 2 player game. One player plays the investigation team, trying to find Jack the Ripper, while the other one is Jack and has to hide long enough to escape.
How the game plays is very interesting: in the beginning of odd turns you flip four coins that represent four different actions. The inspector chooses one, Jack takes two from the remaining three, and the inspector takes the last one. Then, on even turns, the coins are flipped over and four new different actions become available. It is now Jack who starts.
On my first games I found it very fun, but it quickly turned out that it was a lot more difficult for Jack to win, and we ended up tossing a coin to determine who would play the investigators.
This game is small, fast, and great fun for two people.
I have yet to be able to play this game just once. You always want to play as Holmes, and Mr. Jack – the strategy for each is different.
It takes a few minutes to teach people but I’d suggest that this is one of those, “the best way to teach is to play” games. Once they get it though, I haven’t had anyone not love it.
I confess that I’ve never played it’s larger counterpart, however I really feel that this is a great game in its own right.
And at only 15 mins per game, it’s the kinda game you could break out every night/week.
Love this game to death (ahaha)! It’s great fun for two people, and watching someone try to bluff and outwit the other can result in some hilariously friendly bickering. My only real complaint is that it can be hard to keep everything in the small box without a rubber band to help, but that’s a small trade for fifteen dollars of fun. Just make sure you have a table big enough for the tossing of the coins, and someone to watch your back so Mister Jack doesn’t sneak up behind you.