Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
Amsterdam, present day. A crime has been committed, but the police investigation is going nowhere.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Modular Board
Build the play area from interchangeable sections that vary between games.
Cooperative Game
Players coordinate their actions toward a shared objective and win or lose together.
Deduction
Combine clues and exclusions to identify hidden information.
Point-to-Point Movement
Move along explicit connections between named locations or nodes.
Race
Compete to reach a destination, threshold, or objective before opponents.
Read the full game description
Amsterdam, present day. A crime has been committed, but the police investigation is going nowhere. An anonymous client has called your detective agency to investigate. However, your rivals are on the case as well, so there’s no time to waste. Your Intelligence Officer will guide your Detectives through the city, by sending pictures to communicate. Each image contains location intel ... for those who can understand. But you need to decode the messages faster than your rivals while avoiding the police! Explore the city to find three pieces of evidence, and deliver them to your client before the other team in order to receive payment — and win the game! The police don’t want you on the case, so you’d best stay out of their way! If they spot you sniffing around, they’ll put you behind bars, giving your rivals an easy victory. Shadows - Amsterdam is a real-time simultaneous competition between detective agencies, using pictures that contain intel to communicate within your own team. Player roles are asymmetrical: each Intelligence Officer tries to guide their own team around the board, and the Detectives try to understand their Intelligence Officer’s clues in a fast-paced race to victory.