I was wondering how many use variant rules for this game? I love almost everything about the Android, but there are few core concepts that just seems to be counter intuitive.

I just want to list two simple variants I use that changes the game a lot.

Dark shifting is supposed to be bad.

Issue: A thing I felt strange was that dark vs light shifting did not have as big impact as the theme suggest it would. Being darkshifted just allow you play dark cards on your opponents. So this variant changes that by one simple change.

Variant 1: When playing dark card, you pay by lightshifting the target detective instead of yourself.

You may of course still discard to reduce cost as normal.

Result: Having your own detective darkshifted leaves you more vulnerable to hostile dark cards while having your own detective lightshifted gives you more options to use your light cards. Much more according to the theme of the game I think

Turning the murder mystery into a mystery

Issue: When I bought this game long ago, I was disappointed to discover there was no mystery at all. While I did like much of the mechanic of gathering evidence, I had hoped for a bit more puzzle solving.

Variant 2: When dealing out Blue(innocent) Hunch Cards, Place the remaining hunch card face down by the suspect sheets. This represent the actual murderer!

Instead of dealing out Red (guilty) card, place the red cards in a pile near the murder site. Any player who visit the murder site to get a jump on the case, may also look through the red cards and secretly select one or swap for a new one if he already has a red card and wish to change his mind. The actual murderer (hidden blue card) is revealed at the end of the game. With this variant, you should award +2 VP for having the Red (guilty) card of the murderer when the game ends and further +5 VP if you manage to convict him. Players still get the usual victory points for convicting their own suspect even if he was not the actual murderer.

Result: With an actual murderer, and each player having info on one character it cannot be, it opens for deductive skills. Also visiting the murder site at the right time becomes important so you get some insight into previous picks while still having a good selection left to pick from. The extra VP encourage players to care about who is the real killer.

What do you think? The nice thing about these variants are that they require no updates to the board or any of the cards.