While I received Letters from White Chapel some time back I didn’t break open the box, sit down, and play the game until quite recently. I had over the friends that had gifted me the game and sitting around the table we figured the game out. The game is set in Victorian England between August 31, to November 9, 1888 with one player acting as Jack the Ripper and the other players, up to five, playing the police investigators tasked with hunting the serial killer down.
The game is played over five “nights” each broken down into two phases. The first phase, termed “hell”, lets the person playing as Jack the Ripper place his various victims on the board with a number of decoys. Then, the other players place their investigators around the town, again with decoys. Then the victim tokens are flipped over, decoys removed, and victim pawns put on the board (the victims are termed “the wretched in the game’s documentation. I found that apt.) Now the second phase of the night is entered where “Jack” make take a victim or wait, if “Jake” waits the investigators move each victim pawn one space and then “Jack” may turn over an investigator token; if it is a decoy the token is removed if it is an investigator the appropriately colored pawn piece is place on the board. This process repeats until “Jack” decides to take a victim, up to five times on the fifth turn “Jack” must declare a victim. He declares the kill, places a scene of the crime token on the location of the murder and the hunt begins. The Jack player now must move through the streets of White Chapel avoiding the investigators and returning to his hideout (picked at the beginning of the game and written down on a tracking sheet (all of Jack’s moves are a secret to the investigators and are kept track of on a sheet that the “Jack” player maintains.))
The investigator players are tasked with working together to trap Jack or prevent him from getting to his hideout. Each investigator can move during their turn and either search for clues or make an arrest. Searching for clues reveals to the investigators whether any places adjacent to them have been traveled through by Jack. Making an arrest will win the game for the investigators if the adjacent place they declare the arrest in contains Jack. Jack has two limited special moves at his disposal during the hunt: he can move two spaces in a turn or jump over a block. If Jack is arrested or fails to make it back to his hideout in a specified number of moves the investigators win. If Jack makes it the night ends and the next night begins; if Jack makes it to his hideout on the fifth night that player wins.
Turns out this game is really easy for Jake to win! The game definitely is improved by the Jake player being risky in the flight back to their hideout. A cautious, crafty Jack player using their special moves can make it back to the hideout each night without a single investigator finding a single clue! Even once a clue or clues have been found the branching pathway system makes it difficult if not impossible to determine which direction Jack might have gone… The game definitely improves once investigators get a few clues and can start coordinating their moves in an attempt to box Jack in. Of course, even then it still takes some luck, in one game investigators twice found themselves standing next to the killer but had searched for clues instead of making an arrest allowing Jack to escape!
I, and the friends I played with, found the game a lot of fun to play! Especially once we instituted the house rule that Jack must be daring in his flight from justice. Trying to deduce which way Jack might have gone and correlate the investigators moved accordingly is satisfying, even more so when your hunch is right and you find yourself closing in on the killer, or the location of his hideout! It doesn’t hurt that the game can be played in under two hours either!
