Well this is also my first review for BGG, but i must say this game puzzled me so that I had to put it all "on paper" and a review seemed to be the best way...
I must say that this has been a somewhat anticipated game at my table, the Blade runner/Noir theme and investigative mechanics were right down my ally. So we cleared an evening after I brought it and sat down to a 5 player game.
For those who do not know, Android is a game by <PERSON> and published by Fantasy Flight Games.
In Android each player plays a detective in near future New Angeles. Each player is attempted to solve a murder based on evidence and personal hunches whilst grappling with Inner demons and the nebulous conspiracy behind it all.
Presentation
Like all of FFG's games, the presentation of the game is brilliant, even down to the box which has brilliant glossy artwork on the normally textured FFG board game box. Huge board, the same size as Arkham, with alot of space for pieces and tokens. Character standups, tokens etc. are all of FFG's standard heavy cardstock full colour variety. (Which I can attest is very robust, I brought Arkham when it was reissued and only now are tokens starting to show signs of wear)
And there are Cards, loads and loads of cards as well as a full colour rule book. All the cards are full size, no half sized cards.
Game Play
This is all based off a 5 player game, not going to go into too much detail of actual mechanics more going to walk through how the game "feels" to play.
First time, this game does take a bit of time to set up and also requires a fair amount of space. Each player gets a detective character plus assorted bits and pieces representing the character's resources. Each character also gets three NPC tokens representing important people in these character's lives, a movement ruler (who's length varies depending on how good your character's vehicle is) and two sets of cards. The first set of cards, your "twilight" deck is split into two halves, light cards and dark cards based on their card backs. The Dark cards are placed in a communal area and the light deck is kept by your sheet. Each detective also has a plot deck , which is used to determine which of a character's personal demons they have to deal with. (There are three plots for all characters bar one who has two longer term plots)
There is also a murder scenario, which dictates where the scene of the crime and what suspects are involved and where those suspects start. 386
Each suspect also has a sheet which is placed off to the side, each game a number of suspects equal to the number of players plus one is selected. In this game, we used all six available.
Finally, a bunch of leads and suspect tokens are added to the board and each player gets two "hunches" as to whom the murderer is. One hunch represents the suspect the detective believes is guilty, the other who he believes is defiantly innocent. Points are scored at the end of the game if these hunches pan out as "correct".(More points are naturally awarded for the guilty hunch)
At this point the board itself bares mention. It has many locations divided between the Earth and the moon, connected by the space elevator or "Beanstalk". There are spaces depicting various location but unlike many recent games, no paths or squares between them. Instead characters move using their rulers, and can land on any space within range. Some locations have special abilities, others are designated "Seedy" or "Ritzy" and allow players landing on them to draw twilight cards.
Android is in reality three intertwined games, each affects the games ultimate outcome, being the player with the most VPs in their own unique way. The first and most obvious is the murder investigation, this requires the players to move about the board following leads and interviewing suspects. When a lead is "followed up" the player to your left moves it to a new location which must be of the same "type" (colour) and in a different "district" (section of the board) than the placing player. Each lead followed allows you to place a piece of evidence on a suspect, these pieces are scored -4 (most innocent) to +5 (most guilty) and come in three types (Documentary, Physical, and testimony) which are varyingly weak or strong depending on the suspect. Alternatively players can use leads to follow up the conspiracy (see below). All evidence is placed face down, so you have to guess which suspect the other players are trying to place in the frame. (See below)
There are also surprise witness tokens, which are worth -5 but can be countered by placing a "purgery" token which changes them to be worth +5 on a given suspect. 597