A hotseat detective board game for 2–6 players on one device — roll, investigate the crime scene, and spot what's wrong.
What is GUILTY Detective Board?
GUILTY Detective Board turns your screen into a shared detective table for 2 to 6 players — everyone passes the same device, Clue-style. You roll dice to move your piece around the board, visit the crime scene, and try to notice what's off: the game is built around finding anomalies in the scene and using them to crack the case before the other investigators do.
It's a paid game by @rosa-santiago with a free browser act to try ("Act one — free in your browser"), plus a mobile release. The developer lists it as an AI-built project, and it appeared in our new-games sweep this week.
The hotseat format is the part worth underlining. Most detective games are solitary — you and the case. GUILTY makes the deduction a table activity: one device in the middle, players taking turns, everyone reading the same scene and arguing about what it means. It's the board-game-night pattern transported to a browser tab, with dice for movement and the crime scene doing the job of the card deck.
How to play
Play is a loop of move, inspect, accuse. On your turn you roll and move around the board, then examine the location you land on — the crime scene hides details that aren't what they should be, and spotting them is how you build your case. First player to piece the anomalies together and name what happened wins the case.
A case plays out in three beats. Opening moves are about reach — good early rolls decide who gets to the scene first. The middle of the case is inspection: circling the scene, cataloguing details that shouldn't exist, and deciding which anomalies actually connect. The endgame is the accusation, where assembled findings turn into an answer. Because everyone shares one screen, every beat is also a conversation — the game's real rules live in what players say to each other.
Tips for rookie detectives
- Visit the scene early, not late. Anomalies are the currency of the whole game — an early look tells you which part of the board is worth racing to.
- Say what you saw out loud. In hotseat play, information lives in players' heads. Narrating your find ("the window is broken from the inside") keeps the table competitive instead of confusable.
- Track other players' dice luck. Whoever is closing on the crime scene is closing on the win — sometimes the right move is blocking the route, not reading another clue.
- Use the free act to learn the boards. Act one costs nothing and teaches the anomaly-hunting rhythm. Bring that skill to the paid cases and you'll outrun the table.
- Split the board at the start. With two to six detectives and one crime scene, agreeing loose zones ("you take the east rooms") beats four players crowding the same corridor and finding the same clue.
- Count your moves before you commit. Dice are luck, but the route is math. Before spending a turn on a far clue, check whether the player closest to the scene is about to win the race anyway.
Who is GUILTY Detective Board for?
Game-night groups, couples, families with older kids — anyone who wants Clue-style deduction without setting up a physical board. The free first act makes it an easy table test: play one case in the browser, and if your group starts narrating their findings out loud (they will), the paid cases are where it goes from there.
Why it's on NewGameDrops
GUILTY stood out in our sweep as an AI-made game doing something unusual: local multiplayer deduction, not another solo arcade run. The game is paid — the link above goes to the creator's page, and all rights are theirs.
