Time To Solve A Crime

Outfoxed is a co-operative game for 2-4 players in which you will be using your powers of deduction to work out which fox has stolen the pie! There are a number of suspects but can you work together to successfully identify the culprit. This is a game designed and aimed at children, teaching them to work together, apply simple strategies and use deduction so that you all collectively win or lose. This game is aimed at children 5 and over, although we’ve had a lot of success playing this numerous times with our 4-year-old.

Each player takes the role of an investigator working together to try and find out which of the possible suspect foxes has stolen the pie before the fox reaches the end of the board and skips town. Set up involved shuffling the possible thief cards and placing one into the special clue decoder, along with placing all the possible suspect cards around the board.

I Would Have Gotten Away With It if It Wasn’t For You Meddling Kids!

On your turn you will be rolling dice and before rolling deciding if you are going in search of more clues or revealing more suspects. You roll three dice, and these dice either show paw prints for clues or fox tails for suspects. After the first roll, keeping any dice that match your choice you get two further rolls to get a set of three matching symbols or the fox moves further along closer to their escape.

Going after clues, you will move your counter around the board and if you arrive in a clue box you will take a clue from the pile and place it in the handy decoder. The decoder is a really novel thing in this game, placing the clue in the box and moving the shutter along will reveal a green mark if the fox has that feature, possibly a top hat or a pocket watch, and be blank if the potential thief doesn’t have that feature. Once you know this information you can check it against any of the potential revealed suspects to see if they match the clues you have received.

If you choose to reveal suspects, two of the possible suspects are turned over for you to consider against the evidence you have accumulated so far. Once you think you have all the information you need, you can declare which fox you think is the thief, revealing them from within the clue decoder, if you are correct you win the game but fail and the pesky fox responsible for stealing the pie skips town.

A Future Classic

The art in this game is bright and colourful , and more importantly even if your child isn’t confident at reading, they can easily identify the visual aspects of the potential suspects meaning they are still able to fully participate with a bit of help on the names. The real star of the show is the clue decoder which is a really novel addition and adds a lot of excitement to the game.

As parents we’ve found Outfoxed to be a hit with both our son and his 4 and 7 year old cousins who we have also played it with. He loves making the decisions himself on whether he is going after more clues or suspects and delights when the clue decoder comes up green allowing him to eliminate some of the potential suspects. Although this game might not have huge staying power for older children, it’s been a brilliant hit so far and one we all really enjoy as a family. It’s really great winning or losing together, and encouraging younger board gamers into coming up with basic strategy, utilising deduction and learning to play together as a team. Outfoxed is a gem of a board game for younger children that parents will enjoy playing with them too.

This blog was written by Jacob Dunkley