Mosquito, a secret crime organization, is determined to protect its treasure from hunters like you. Solve the clues and get to the loot before Mosquito does!
What Is Masters of Crime: Mosquito?
Masters of Crime: Mosquito is a mystery-solving game for 1 to 6 players, ages 16 and up, and takes about 2 to 4 hours to play. It retails for $24.95 and is available in game stores and directly from Kosmos. The game’s plot involves murder, blackmail, and other shady business, but I would probably give it a PG-13 rating, and there are some puzzles that may be a little difficult for those who aren’t proficient at online searches. Note that you will need access to the internet to play this game.
Masters of Crime: Mosquito was designed by Lukas Setzke, Martin Student, and Verena Wiechens, and published by Kosmos.
Masters of Crime: Mosquito Components
Here’s what comes in the box:
- Expedition Board sheet
- Map/Notes sheet
- 12 Sealed envelopes
- 72 Cards
The expedition board is a large sheet that unfolds. There are spaces along the edges for the draw deck as well as locations and other specific cards. In the center there are spaces to place cards for the people you encounter, as well as a spot for their alibis. Finally, there are several rows of stars and stopwatch icons that you will fill in as you play the game.
The cards are a large format with a number in the bottom right corner, and they contain both the instructions to play the game as well as artwork, story, and choices to make over the course of the game, which will direct you to other cards or envelopes. The “envelopes” are mostly folded sheets of paper, sealed with stickers, and numbered 1 to 12.
While the cards themselves do not get damaged during play, the expedition sheet and some of the envelopes have spaces to write things down, which would prevent you from passing the game along to somebody else afterward. If you used scrap paper and sticky notes, you could probably save the consumables so the game could be played multiple times by other players, but it’s really intended to be played just once by any given group.
How to Play Masters of Crime: Mosquito
The Goal
There are two parts to the game: in the first half, you must solve a murder; in the second half, you must find the treasure.
Setup
The setup instructions are all on the first couple of cards in the deck. You start with the blank expedition board, a fold-out map that shows Central American and part of South America, and Location A, the Tower Bridge in London.
Gameplay
Much of the game is reading the stories on the cards and making some choices, which will lead you to other cards. You’re a treasure hunter who gets tips from a local professor, and you’ve arranged to meet him at the Tower Bridge for your latest tip. Your first choice comes when you hear sounds of a struggle: do you sneak in, call out, or rush in? Your choice determines which card to draw next.
Depending on your choices, you may earn stars or lose time (marking them on the expedition sheet). The cards will also instruct you about discarding specific numbered cards, opening sealed envelopes, or placing stacks of cards on the various location spots on the board.
Whenever you see the globe icon, whether on a card or on a sealed envelope, it means you will need to do some research online. While there are some sites that were created for the game (for instance, the professor’s “secure” email), there are also a few puzzles that just require you to look up actual facts about history, geography, and so on.
The “???” combination lock icon means that there’s a place to enter the solution to a puzzle on the website—if you’re correct, you will get instructions about how to proceed.
Game End
At the end of the first part, you will have to figure out the identity of a murderer. In the second half, you’re actually looking for the treasure and will need to make many choices about which characters you’ll partner with, and your path through the jungle, where you’ll encounter various obstacles and dangers. The two parts can be played separately and make a natural pause point in the game.
Your score is based on the number of stars you’ve earned, and every 4 time that you lose cost you a star. You compare your score to a chart to see how well you did.
Why You Should Play Masters of Crime: Mosquito
This is actually the fifth title in the Masters of Crime series, though it’s the first one I’ve played. Like many other escape-room or other mystery-solving games, it’s intended to be played once, because then you’ll know the solutions to the puzzles. One difference is the story-based aspect of this one. In many of the interactions, you’ll make a choice about what to say to somebody or how to react: your answer often determines how many stars you earned or how much time you wasted, but typically there won’t be any crucial information withheld from you. There are times when the better choice gives you extra information that will help, but if you don’t solve the murder it won’t be because you didn’t pick the right path to get all the clues.
The inclusion of real-world research presents an interesting challenge, though we got a little frustrated with the first puzzle that required it. Without spoiling anything, we were able to figure out the right answer, but had a lot of trouble figuring out how to format it to enter into the solution website. They weren’t all that bad, but we spent a good chunk of our play session running into that wall, which wasn’t as fun—particularly because we were right about the answer.
The websites themselves are serviceable but there were some weird choices. One is in the URLs themselves: they are things like masters-of-crime.com/mosquito-enter-codes and masters-of-crime.com/mosquito-hints-help, which are long and unwieldy to type. It’s odd that they don’t use QR codes or URL shorteners for these, particularly because later in the game we did come across a QR code to scan for a website. There are a number of puzzles that rely on information found on the fake websites; these at least have a limited number of pages to visit, but sometimes there is strange formatting. I get the feeling they weren’t optimized for mobile devices, because I would occasionally get text overlapping images. The hints website in particular has one incredibly frustrating feature: at least in my browser, the tab to switch from “cards” to “objects” is entirely invisible until you click on it.
As for the game itself, I did enjoy the variety of puzzles and challenges included. The game rewards careful observation of the illustrations and paying attention to details in the stories. It’s not strictly about solving puzzles but also using some intuition and drawing inferences based on what you know about the characters. I also liked that the choices you make can affect the encounters you’ll have in the jungle, too, so your experience of the actual treasure hunt may vary a bit from mine.
There is some humor, too, with more than one tongue-in-cheek allusion to Indiana Jones. That said, your character isn’t a hero: you’re just here for the treasure, looting ancient temples for your own profit. That’s in line with the Masters of Crime series, though, because in all of them you play some sort of criminals: thieves, drug dealers, gang members, and so on. Treasure hunter seems almost tame in comparison.
My crew of three treasure hunters managed to get the highest score despite a few missteps here and there, and for the most part we enjoyed the game. I’m definitely curious about the other titles in the series now, and whether they’ll have similar types of puzzles and online research, but I imagine the overall format will be similar.
If you’re up for some mystery and adventure (and you don’t mind playing a morally questionable character), check out Masters of Crime: Mosquito! Find out more about the series at the Masters of Crime official website.
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
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