The Crew meets Werewolf in new trick-taking card game Inside Job
It’s all on the cards.
A new trick-taking card game from The Crew publisher, Kosmos, features hidden role gameplay.
Called Inside Job, the upcoming card game is built around a similar gameplay mechanic as The Crew – a card game that won the prestigious Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2020 – with players being forbidden to vocally communicate what is in their hand but needing to play the right cards in the right order. However, unlike The Crew, which is a fully co-op card game, Inside Job has players pursuing different objectives depending on their hidden role.
In a similar vein to the classic social deduction game Werewolf, Inside Job sees players secretly working against each other as in hidden roles. Whilst the majority of players will be spies on the same team, the other players will be a mixture of different roles, with one player taking the role of the sinister Insider. As a spy, the players will be attempting to complete a series of missions by playing rounds of tricks, meaning that one player leads with a suit and the others follow if they can. Whoever plays the highest-numbered card of that suit wins the trick and gains the briefcase, with the spies' aim being to have their tricks fit the mission requirements.
As the Insider, the player will be attempting to grab control of the briefcase for themselves, with their goal being to keep ahold of the briefcase for a certain number of tricks. The other players do not know who the Insider is and cannot ask them to share information about their hand or intentions during rounds, but may garner some clues depending on the others’ behaviour.
Should the spies successfully complete all their missions then they win Inside Job. However, if they ever fail a mission then players will enter into a pointing round in which they’re free to openly discuss their suspicions about their fellow players. Whilst the Insider wants to remain anonymous, the other spies will want to correctly identify them if they still want any chance of winning the game. Besides the spies and the Insider, the card game features other roles – such as decoys or sleeper agents – which are made available with higher player counts.
Inside Job was created by Tanner Simmons, with this being the designer’s second board game after Gobble-Ins!. Beside Inside Job and The Crew: Quest for Planet Nine, Kosmos is also responsible for publishing the two-player card games Lost Cities and Targi.
Inside Job is currently available in a German-language version, with an English-language version coming in Summer 2023.