Game description from the publisher:
The goal of each agent in Inkognito is to complete a mission, together with his partner. At the beginning of the game, however, players don't know which mission they must fulfill!
In the standard four-player game, each player guides one of four secret agents. The four characters are allied in pairs: Lord Fiddlebottom and Colonel Bubble are always partnered against Agent X and Madame Zsa Zsa. Each of the four agents is represented by one of four different figures, with different builds: tall, short, fat, thin. Only one of them represents the actual character controlled by a player. The other three figures represent spies which are friendly to him and that are trying to confuse the opposition.
On a turn, a player shakes the Phantom of Prophecy randomizer to determine his three available actions, e.g., moving on a land route or a sea route. The player moves his figures, trying to reach spaces already occupied by the other players' figures or the Ambassador. When figures are in the same space, the current player gets the right to "ask questions" and inspect some of the cards of that player. By deduction and a logical process of elimination, he can draw conclusions as to the identity and intentions of the other players.
The first goal of every agent is to discover which of the other players is his partner. This partner has the other half of the "code" indicating his secret mission. After discovering (or thinking he has discovered) the real identity of the other players, an agent must trade his secret mission card with his ally. This will reveal the final mission and what must be done to complete it. If either agent on a team completes the mission, both he and his partner win the game.
There is another character with an important role in the game: the Ambassador. He can be used to get clearer information about the other characters. Everyone wants to meet him because he is well-informed and can be useful to accomplish your purposes, but he can also help your rivals, so do everything you can to keep him far from them.
The 2013 version of Inkognito from Ares Games raises the maximum player count to five by allowing someone to play the Ambassador and move it during his turn. He can still gather clues when the other players question the Ambassador during their turn, and the other players can still gather clues from him. The goal of the Ambassador's player is to know everything about the other characters, guessing their identities and builds. If the Ambassador achieves "perfect knowledge" before a team accomplishes its secret missions, he wins the game.
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- something older let's see like Carcassonne and Dixit and right ticket to ride and what was the other one drink ah Polly drink yeah we saw a copy everywhere
- and when I asked of course Frank Yeager was of course the gentleman a tour guide our guide and I worked in worked in sales worked in product development here and he was amazing
- he said 17 million games come out of here and later two to three thousand different games coming a month and those include different like yeah and so it's just it's an incredible thing
- and one of the things that that really stuck out to me too because he said yes we have all this machinery here but what makes our productions the quality that they are it's the operators right the operators have to be watching and ensuring everything and working exactly had little adjustments have to be made all the time
- and I have to say like I watched a documentary that was made about the production here it was nothing like seeing it in person I just had a great time in there it's very exciting
- and so they're the publisher of catan right and so Catan is one of those games that was real kind of it wasn't the first in German but it was like the Gateway yeah it was like the Gateway North Americans it for a lot of North Americans into the Germans field
- the speed limit is based on what kind of vehicle you you drive based on the speed rating of your tires
- the fastest I've driven on the Autobahn is 220 kilometers