A surprising mind twister

If The Meeple Guild were to categorize 2025 it might be the year of games just a bit different from the norm hitting our table.

It is a year which has included games such as Bloomchasers, Yoink!, Rivages among others which have rule sets which are a bit different, and now we add A Carnivore Did It! 

From designers Daumilas Ardickas, and Urtis Šulinskas, and publisher Horrible Guild, A Carnivore Did It! sort of puts players in the role of detectives trying to determine the culprit from an array of suspects.

Each suspect offers up a statement which may, or may not be true – the game at least tells you how many are being untruthful in each array.

You use logic to determine who is lying and from there you hopefully can finger the culprit.

The game plays one-to-five, although there is no reason a larger number couldn’t co-operate in this one, but the arguments as everyone offers up their ideas might bog down things.

The game is a solid puzzle offering to play solo, but works as a group effort.

Now it was expected by yours truly that The Meeple Guild might not like this one because it’s quite different, but that difference actually enhanced the interest.

A Carnivore Did It! is so different from any other game in The Meeple Guild collection that it was a rather entertaining exercise.

Now if you really like the game – it could easily be a go-to solo time sink – this one can stay fresh for a very long time.

While the most basic ‘case’ has only a few suspects and one culprit to find, it ramps up the difficulty if you think you’ve got the game figured out as being too easy.

There are cases where you're searching for two culprits — or even three, and more than one of the suspects may be lying.

A Carnivore Did It! includes 2,000 cases, each with a single solution, with the difficulty increasing to have up to seven suspects, conditional statements, and varying levels of truthfulness.

The sheer volume of cases provided here really sets this game apart.

Admittedly though you will need to fall deeply in love with A Carnivore Did It! to ever complete 2,000 cases, but the sheer volume will keep the game interesting for as long as it intrigues you.

Now, while we liked this one quite a lot it’s brain burner nature – we tried a more complicated case and failed miserably – it isn’t a game for all evening play at our table. Reasonably it tops out at about a half dozen cases – certainly no more than 10 – at a session for us, and not week after week either.

But drag it out every couple of months to give the brain a bit of a workout and A Carnivore Did It! is going to shine.

As a solo it would be an interesting self-challenge to track how many cases you successfully solved when you finally check the answer – I fear my success rate would be less than impressive.

In the end A Carnivore Did It! is an acquired taste, but if it interests, it will provide hours of game time.

Check it out at www.horribleguild.com