Kronologic: Cuzco 1450 (buy from Amazon · Miniature Market) is the second game in the Kronologic series of competitive logic-puzzle games that started with 2024’s Kronologic: Paris 1920, which I liked quite a bit other than worrying that the puzzles might be too easy for older/more experienced players. This second game comes with a new theme and 15 new mysteries to solve, coming in three “scenarios”, with the first two fairly straightforward while the third is kind of bananas.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Kronologic series, each case revolves around six characters moving around a map of six locations across six time periods, and you have to figure out something specific, such as (in the first five cases here) what one location was visited by only two characters in total, and when those characters were there at the same time. On your turn, you get one clue of your choosing, which you get by combining a location and a character or a location and a time period. All information in the game takes the form of character-time period-location; you can combine either of the first two with a location to get the missing bit.
The location cards have grids of symbols on the back, which you’re not allowed to look at directly; instead, you take the character or time period overlay and place it over the location card to get two clues. One clue is public, a number that tells you how many characters in that location at that time, or how many times that character went to that location, that you must read out loud. The second clue is private, and will tell you one time period when the character was in that location, or one character who was in that location at that time period.
Each case starts out with a map showing you all characters’ locations in the first or sixth time period and some paths between locations that are blocked or are one-way. Characters can’t stay in the same location in consecutive time periods, so you know they must move and can try to deduce their locations in time periods before/after known locations. The goal is to get enough clues to deduce that case’s solution.
The first two scenarios here are familiar enough in format that anyone who’s done some logic puzzles should get the hang of the game fairly quickly. The third scenario is where it gets much harder: characters move in ‘dances,’ sequences of movements, and in the last few cases you don’t even know which character moves according to which dance. I mentioned my concern that the Paris box wasn’t hard enough. I do not have that concern with the Cuzco box. If the first ten cases aren’t hard enough, the last five really should fit the bill.
There is an expansion for the Paris game called Panic at the Opera & the Cursed Lovers, with 10 new cases, but I haven’t played it (it requires the original, which I no longer own) and it’s only available in a few places, like Noble Knight Games, while it’s out of stock at Miniature Market.