MicroMacro: Crime City is a puzzle brain game where you are solving crimes by discovering clues hidden in black and white pictures. You solve a series of cases that relate to different large pictures you lay out on the table between all the players. The novelty is that the picture includes multiple time zones so you can piece together the sequence of what happened and who is guilty.

Once you have chosen your case and laid out the photo, the Lead Investigator player reads out the scenario on the first Case card. The card describes a crime and shows you what the victim looks like and where the crime happened on the map. The subsequent Case cards direct you through the investigation: finding the scenes, identifying clues and deducing who did it.

As this unfolds, you have to scour the map picture for intricate clues. You also have to figure out the order of events you see on the map happening at different times. This means you can follow people, cars, items and objects around the map.

The result is much more than a hidden object game. What starts off as a confusingly busy map, soon gives way to all sorts of stories. Not only are there all the layered clues for the different cases, but also a rich level of activity that both distracts and intrigues players. Particularly for families with players of different ages, this works well. You can give it a go with the online demo.