Pyramid Review
Fraud Squad -- Who Cooked the Books?
Published by Diet Evil Games
56 full-color cards & instructions; $11.95
Fraud Squad is the first release from a new Austin-based game publisher, Diet Evil Games. It is a timely and topical card game in which each player is part of a Securities & Exchange Commission team assigned to investigate corporate fraud. A source has tipped the SEC off that a major company has been filing false accounts, but provided no more details than this. The investigator that successfully unmasks the culprit will get a promotion, but in order to get the job done properly the boss stresses that every member of the team must cooperate with each other.
Designed for three to six players, aged 8 years and up, Fraud Squad consists of 56 full-color cards; the game also requires a single six-sided die plus pen and scratch paper for each player. The cards are split between 10 rules and chart cards, with the remainder consisting of suspect -- Employee, Company, Technique, and Location -- cards and special cards. The cards are all nicely illustrated, though the Company and Technique cards are invariably better illustrated and more amusing than the others. For example, the "Pseudo Corp" company has the motto, "Pretending to do business for over 20 years"; Spendron the motto, "Spending profits so you don't have to"; and Globecon's is, "Deceiving the world, one customer."
At the beginning of the game, the suspects are separated into their four types and shuffled; one . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: April 4, 2003
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