Get ready to enter the poor and dreary Whitechapel district in London 1888 – the scene of the mysterious Jack the Ripper murders – with its crowded and smelly alleys, hawkers, shouting merchants, dirty children covered in rags who run through the crowd and beg for money, and prostitutes – called “the wretched” – on every street corner.

The board game Letters from Whitechapel, which plays in 90-150 minutes, takes the players right there. One player plays Jack the Ripper, and his goal is to take five victims before being caught. The other players are police detectives who must cooperate to catch Jack the Ripper before the end of the game. The game board represents the Whitechapel area at the time of Jack the Ripper and is marked with 199 numbered circles linked together by dotted lines. During play, Jack the Ripper, the Policemen, and the Wretched are moved along the dotted lines that represent Whitechapel’s streets. Jack the Ripper moves stealthily between numbered circles, while policemen move on their patrols between crossings, and the Wretched wander alone between the numbered circles.

Disclaimer: The game is my own copy, and thoughts on the game are not swayed by any outside influences.

Review:

Set up of the board is fairly easy and not too long, with just a few components going onto the board during the initial set up phase, with more being added / swapped out once both ‘sides’ have decided where they are deploying.

Rules again are fairly simple, with clear and concise descriptions and plenty of picture examples in the rulebook.

There are also quite a number of how to play / play through videos online for people to watch and better understand the round sequence / structure.

Each of the four ‘nights’ begin with putting out markers for the possible victims of Jack, and once he decides to carry out another murder he begins to move from that location, trying to get back to his hideout before being caught by the hunting Policemen. Movement for Jack and placement of the potential victims is on numbered circles, whilst the Police move around on black squares along the same dotted lines as the numbered circles, of which there are around 195.

Jack pre-selects one of the numbers as his hideout for the game and this remains the same for each night, so the Police can try to work out where he resides by process of elimination, unless of course Jack fools them by doing a series of sneaky moves by foot, coach or using the back alleys of Whitechapel to move around and hide himself from their detection.

LFW has a real ‘cat & mouse’ feel to it, with each night becoming more and more difficult to get back to the hideout as the murder sites are widespread across a large board and you potentially start further and further away from the hideout after each event has happened, meaning more turns for the police to check for clues or instigate an arrest.

All of Jacks movements are recorded on a hidden pad, and if the Police guess for a clue on a numbered circle Jack has been on that particular night (they are cleared at the end of each night) then a clue marker is placed at that site so they know he has passed that way, or he could even be there, but he is only caught if an arrest is called rather than asking for a clue. Jack then starts his movement again from this point.

Jack is also caught / loses the game if he doesn’t successfully return to his hideout before a certain number of moves have been made by him, or if the Police stop him by blocking his movement as he cannot move through them on foot.

Jack only gets a certain number of coach and alley tokens each night, and these decrease as each night comes and goes, meaning the last night is mostly a foot slog for him to get back to his hideout.

The board, cards and pieces are of a nice quality, with a mix of cardboard, plastic and wood. With the ‘Dear Boss’ expansion the police, victims and Jack are all supplied as nice plastic miniatures, and these certainly look better on the board.

The rulebook is well laid out, and has plenty of colour pictures to aid in learning the game. 

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