REAR WINDOW Board Game from Funko adds unique tension to co-op play

Back window is a classic film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It features a man observing his neighbors witnessing a murder and then trying to figure out how to prove it happened. Funko has created a board game based on the movie that does a good job of holding a certain amount of tension that the movie uses. They recently sent me a copy of the game and I really enjoyed playing it even though I’m not very familiar with it Back window.

For one thing, the quality of the game itself is good. The pieces are all well done and the cards are of good quality. I also liked the graphics in the game, they weren’t overly complicated but looked nice in their simplicity. I was really impressed with the game box insert, everything has its designated place. This may seem like an obvious thing, but I’ve found that many games have completely screwed up their inserts, causing setup to take much longer than necessary. But this one is well structured so as to make installation and disassembly easier.

The game itself is a cooperative type of competitive game. If you have ever played Mystery then this gameplay will feel very familiar. There are boards depicting windows for 4 days. Each day, a player designated as manager places two cards for each apartment. The cards have pictures that are clues for the rest of the players to determine who lives in the apartment and what is their characteristic. For example, you can have Miss Lonelyhearts whose trait is thief. There are a lot of traits and characters that are different in each game. The director knows who is where and what her traits are and it is up to the rest of the players to find the solution. At the end of each day the director tells the players how many of their guesses are correct. There are also character cards from the movie that can help you once per game. The skills are powerful and I recommend if you are really stumped about something not to hesitate to use them.

Here is the twist that makes this game unique from other similar ones I have played. There may or may not be a person murdered. If a murder has occurred, the director is trying to hide this fact from the players. The playmaker still wants the players to do the rest of the board right, but they don’t want them to find out there was a murder to win. If no murders have occurred, the director and players all win together by getting all the information correct. This creates an interesting dynamic where players trust and distrust the director. When I played we thought there was a murder because the director seemed inconsistent with some of the cards. We finally figured out there was no murder, but it was fun to speculate wildly. I really liked this element, it really plays with the idea that Jeff saw what he thought he saw or that there was a reasonable explanation for everything.

Overall, I really enjoyed this game. It was pretty quick once we got going and was a fun game of deduction. If you like Mystery and/or Back window, so I highly recommend this game. I would give this game a 9/10.