I love the idea of print-and-play games. It’s fantastic to be able to try before you buy. But, I’ve run into a couple of problems with the execution. Namely, I don’t have the library of game bits to fill out a proper PnP game, and second, the cost can be as high as a retail version of a game, and that doesn’t even account for my time. After I printed and played Tiny Epic Defenders, despite my enjoyment of that game, the hours and expense made me rethink my stance on PnP. That’s a long introduction to saying that Dead Drop is the perfect game for PnP. You only need a handful of cards, some reference cards and some tokens. I knocked mine out for a few bucks and an hour of time.

Dead Drop is a simple deduction game where your goal is to figure out what card has been placed face down in “the drop” and claim it before any other player. There is a very limited set of cards, so you use a process of elimination to figure things out. Each player has secret information in his or her hand, and there is common information in the form of “the stash,” a set of face-up cards in the center of the table.

On a turn, a player has the choice of three actions: share info, where a player exchanges one face-down card from her hand blindly with a single opponent, sell secrets, where a player reveals two face-down cards from her hand and the opponent must truthfully answer if he has a card equal to the sum of those two, and swap the stash, where the player exchanges a single card from her hand with any card in the stash. At the end of her turn, the player may attempt to grab the drop by playing two cards equal to the supposed sum of the drop and then checking. If right, the round is over and that player gets a point. If wrong, the player blows herself up, and her hand is added to the stash.

The brilliance and tension of Dead Drop comes from the fact that each of these actions gives more information to one or more opponents. Not only are you trying to find the drop, but you’re also trying to surmise what your opponents have seen or have not seen to keep ahead of them. Thus, your optimal move might not be the one that gives you the most information; it’s the one that gives you some useful information while also hiding information from an opponent.

When I first saw Dead Drop, I thought it looked okay. Sure, it’s a Love Letter-esqe microgame, and the artwork is nice, but it didn’t really get me excited. You count numbers. Woo. But, that ease of constructing the PnP convinced me to give it a try, and try it I did. I tried it in the house, in the board game cafe, in the pub, and anywhere else I could try it. And it was good. Non-gamers got it and liked it. Gamers appreciated it. Laminated, it was nigh-indestructible so I could take it everywhere with ease. Portable and fun.

But the story doesn’t end there. I recently moved, and in my new location, I have a much greater need for small portable games, so Dead Drop has seen a resurgence. But this time it was different. I was playing with experienced Texas Hold’em players. These guys brought bluffing to the game. Now, someone would use “sell secrets” or “swap the stash” to make others think they were looking for a card that was in their hand all along. That could convince an opponent to try to grab the drop and eliminate himself instead. Suddenly, the game was more than a deductive race. It had taken on a whole new level of subterfuge.

I backed Dead Drop on Kickstarter at the Deluxe level because I thought I could give away some of the alternative artwork decks as gifts. Given how much people like this game, that was a good call. But, here’s the thing, I don’t have to. I can use my cheap PnP forever, and anyone else can make one too. Mine looks as good as the day I made it. Yesterday, I got word that my official copy of Dead Drop will be shipping soon, and I just don’t care. I’m happy I supported the designer, Jason, the artists, including Adam, and Patrick at Crash Games, but it’s not going to change my enjoyment of the game at all. When it comes to retail, definitely give this game a look. Or print off your own copy. It’s worth that amount of time and money ten times over. Rather than getting old, it just gets richer with every play.