It's for an investigation adventure game like games in the Arkham Horror family. It's a game where you have character with resources: HP, equipment, etc, And various choices of encounters in the world.
I want to avoid the situation where one player tells every other player what to do, unless playing solo. So my objective was to keep something hidden from the rest of the player that should incite them to resolve certain encounters instead of another one.
I am not really sure what to keep hidden, I have a couple of ideas, but I would need more suggestions. I try to keep the number of components low. I do not want any traitor mechanism.
Hidden resources: Gives bonus on certain conditions. Discarded or revealed once used. Resources in hand will influence encounter resolved, or could lock encounter if matching resource is missing.
Puzzle Pieces: Like "final hour", you accumulate puzzle pieces that needs to be assemble at the end. The problem is that it does not change player's choices through the game.
Secret objectives: Things they need to do in their personal lives or something they are the only one to know they need to accomplish.
Secret encounters: Only the player can perform those encounters. I Need to put the target location on the card unless I can mark it somehow on the board with tokens.
Do you have any other ideas?
Being able to simulate a feeling of investigation would be interesting. I know, complete investigation is not possible without double blind resolution or a game master.
Your game reminds me of "London 1888", a game about jack the ripper. It's relatively long and random. I managed to play an outlier game where jack the ripper was found on the first turn, normally it should happen mid game.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/19991/london-1888
Another idea that I thoughts to avoid quarter backing are fears. Maybe you get 1 or 2 cards that determines what you are scared of. It could be pretty abstract like an icon, and those cards are hidden. Those fear could prevent you from:
This way, even if there is quarter backing, the player could deviate from the optimal choice if it's one of his fears. The quarter backer would not know the player acted out of fear rather than reasoning.
It also works in solitaire mode, you just know the fears of all characters. So the game should remain as much difficult.