Mr Jack Pocket

Mr Jack Pocket is the little brother of Mr Jack, a deduction game where one player takes the role of Mr Jack, a Victorian murderer hiding amongst civilians, and the other is trying to catch him.

Mr Jack Pocket is different not only in size – it comes in a tiny box suitable for travel – but also in how the game works. As with the original game one player is the police and the other the criminal.

The board is made up of nine city tiles that are set up randomly, with the character side facing up. Three detective pieces – Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson and his dog Toby – are placed around the outside of this playing area. Because the playing area is made up of parts of a city, the detective pieces can effectively look down any street they are adjacent to at the end of a turn. On a turn four action tokens are thrown in the air, and whichever side up they land decides which actions are available for that turn. The action tokens move detectives, rotate city tiles, swap city tiles or allow a player to take a character card – this latter option allows the detectives to eliminate people from their enquiries (as Mr Jack’s card will already have been removed from this deck) or allow Mr Jack to collect hourglasses, which are marked on the cards.

After these actions have been taken Mr Jack announces whether any of the three detectives can see him (i.e. his character is visible in a street they are looking down) and if he is not, he gets an hourglass token. If he is, he doesn’t. Either way, announcing his visibility or lack of it means the detectives can eliminate more characters from their enquiries – their objective being to identify which character Mr Jack is masquerading as.

Mr Jack can also win – by collecting six hourglasses (showing the investigation has taken too long) or surviving unmasked for the full eight rounds of the game.