If the center room is used as a start/end point, as it was in the 2011 edition, then the Murder cards can go there as well without compromising anything — and indeed makes sense. Too bad they didn’t include a Christmas themed Murder envelope.coinilius wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2019 11:46 pm The Sleigh Room definitely looks like it could have been intended as a functional room at some point in the development of this game - if they are going to have a singular room as the start location, it makes more sense to me to have that room be the central one (it can be the denouncement room as well if they want to go that way as well).
The start room doors straddling two tiles on the side exits/entrances seems particularly bad as a design element as that room actually is used in game play - I assume you can exit the room from any of its three doors? That brings up another issue with the start room - what do you really do with it after you exit?
The dedicated “Start” space is the same in the Road Trip edition, completely wasted once the game begins ... unless it’s a Start/End point (in which case it’s like the annoying Windows Start menu used to quit lol). At least in Road Trip, it hugs the hinge edge and takes up as little space as possible on the board. There’s nothing in the instructions about only using one door. And the Road Trip édition has the same design flaw, but the interesting thing there is the side doors are double doors which split one door per tile. So in that case I’d say it’s clear the player can exit on either tile.
Here, I think the Start area makes for a better room. If you look closely, you can see paper coffee cups which look a lot like Starbucks (a major marketing opportunity was missed here by Starbucks I feel), so it could be the elves Break Room, or Coffee Bar, or even the North Pole Starbucks LOL. Maybe a Hot Cocoa Bar is best in keeping with the spirit. In fact if you look closely at the artwork, it appears as though red menus are posted on the corner walls depicting different-sized cups (there also appears to be another art error behind the bar with what appears to be a pass-through window to a kitchen, and the remains of part of the bar). But we need an 8th room card to make this a room — and that blank spare included with the game would have been perfect if they just printed a card back onto it!
I’m definitely going to create a couple of extra room cards and reprint this whole game in a larger format. It’ll be on cheap card stock, but that will be at least as good as the original printing.
Also, another observation — none of the rooms have windows. That suggests Santa is running something of a sweatshop LOL Or, maybe he’s just paranoid about security.
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