Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 20-30 minutes

Summary of the Components

Murder of Crows comes with a deck of cards and a rulebook.

Quality: The Murder of Crows cards are all well-produced, medium weight, and glossy. 4 out of 5.

Beauty: The artwork and graphic design is all by Thomas Denmark. There's a unique picture in the center of each card as well as some nice graphic design around it. They're generally quite attractive. 5 out of 5.

Usability: There are five types of cards in Murder of Crows ("M", "U", "R", "D", and "E"), each of which does something unique. The cards mention the word for each power (e.g., "U"ncover and "R"eap) but don't actually remind you what they do in any meaningful way, which is a serious problem for a casual game that you'll probably be introducing to new players. (Frequent players will have it all figured out within a game.) The cards also have fanning problems. Because there's vital information to both the right-top and left-top of the card, it's really hard to see it all at once. 2 out of 5.

Theming: The object of the game is spell "MURDER" When you do you'll also have a murder explained across the bottom of the cards, such as "(M) Voices whispered - (U) in an abandoned church when - (R) Tom Thornbritches - (D) with a burning vengeance - (E) used a fountain pen to stab - (R) Heidi Harmony." The pictures of course match the words. It's all pretty delightfully done. 5 out of 5.

Some of the usability of Murder of Crows is quite annoying, but this is overall a beautiful and well-produced game, thus I've given it a "4" out of "5" for Style.

Summary of the Gameplay

The object of Murder of Crows is easy enough: you have to spell the word M-U-R-D-E-R by playing six cards with those letters. On your turn, you draw a card, then play a card, which all sounds easy enough.

The catch is that each card does something. R lets you draw a card; M lets you take a card from another player's display; U lets you take a card from another player's hand; D forces everyone else to discard a specific letter from their display (though they may have more of the same letter under the first one); and E forces everyone to discard and draw back up to a hand of 3.

Players can block attacks by playing a card with the appropriate number of crows (from 1-3).

There's slightly more nuance, but that's the game in general. When someone spells MURDER, they win.

The Game Design

A Murder of Crows is generally a simple American design. It's got plenty of opportunity to attack other players to try and stop them from winning, but that's balanced by a bit of strategy, as you can decide to save cards for defense rather than to use them to attack.

The result is pretty chaotic and somewhat random. You'll probably see a lot of people get most of the way to MURDER, then crouch at the edge while everyone else tries to stop them. The ending might come about due to careful strategy, but it's just as likely to arise from a lucky draw and/or everyone using up their stop-the-winner cards.

Though it's somewhat shallow, it's also short and fun. I've given it an average rating of "3" out of "5" for Substance with the understanding that it's a light and chaotic American-style game.

Conclusion

A Murder of Crows can allow for some light fun before a regular roleplaying session, and is particularly nice for its thematic tones. As such it'd be great before Trail of Cthulhu or something else horrific.