The next step on our top one hundred list is a competitive deduction game, Phantom of the Opera. One played is the phantom attempting to scare away the star actress of the Opera while the other player is the manager trying to find out who is the Phantom before the production loses its star! Figuring out how to best use the characters available is the key to victory in this game.
At the start the game all of the characters start in different rooms randomly. After the characters take their actions there is a check for the phantom. One of the characters at the start was randomly selected to be the phantom as well. If at the end of the round that character is alone or in a dark room he will appear and be frightening getting a bonus towards the Phantom players victory! But this can also be quite revealing for the other played because they flip over any of the character discs that couldn’t possibly be the Phantom. So any disc that is together with other characters and in a lit room.
Each round a player will get to use two of the four characters being used in that half of the round. The other four will be used in the second half of the round. Some of the characters cause other ones to move either towards the character, away from the character, or even with the character! Some of the others can interact with the board in different ways - turn off the lights in a room, lock one, or move through secret hallways. The last character can reveal one of the suspect cards which are people that could be the phantom. If a character is drawn for the phantom they have protected that character from being revealed in that fashion but the manager player would get to flip that disk over.
The object of the game for the phantom player is to get the scared track to the end signalling the star leaving and closing down the show. The manager player only wins if they flip over all of the discs except the phantom character - even if they know which character it is from thinking about the options, they have to prove it! We’ve always enjoyed working against each other in a deductive tug of war makes it a great introduction to the Top 50 of our Top 100!