I've been toying with the idea as a thought experiment only, but I was wondering if Android could be tweaked into a (semi) co-op game without too much trouble.

Here's my initial idea:

1) Rather than each player getting handed Hunch cards off the bat, the Guilty Hunches are shuffled and one is drawn at random, without looking at it, and is placed face-down under the board. This is the actual murderer. No Innocent Hunches are dealt. The Innocent Hunches are shuffled and placed face down on the table in a deck. So are the remaining Guilty Hunches.

2) Gameplay proceeds as normal, except that when you follow-up a lead, rather than looking at the evidence and placing it on a suspect of your choice, you shuffle the Innocent Hunches deck and draw a card, and play the evidence face-down on that suspect in the appropriate location, then re-shuffle the card back into the Innocent Hunches deck.

3) Since the game is ostensibly cooperative, there won't be a lot of encouragement to play Dark Cards on other players, except to recharge the Twilight meter. Therefore, at the start of a player's turn, the player to their right must draw and play a Dark Card from the active player's deck, if the play is possible. If it's not, then the player must hold the card and play it as soon as possible. Dark Cards may not be discarded to change the Twilight cost of a Light Card.

4) At the end of each "plot resolution" day (so days 3 and 6 of each week), the Innocent Hunches are shuffled and a card is drawn. A Hit is placed on that suspect.

5) At the end of the first week, one of the cards from the Guilty Hunch deck is flipped up and revealed to all players, since something happens to clear one suspect. No further evidence can be placed on that suspect.

6) During the end of game phase, after the Evidence has been revealed, but before a Guilty verdict is acheived, Victory Points from plots and bonuses, and penalties from Trauma are counted. Those Victory Points can then be used on a one-for-one basis to move points of Evidence from one suspect to another (maybe this should be limited to only the points of the player with the most points).

7) So, the object of the game is not only to prove one suspect is guilty, but also to determine which suspect is the guilty party. A perfect win would be a correct conviction. A second-best case would be the killing of the guilty suspect. A loss would be a wrongful conviction.

Problems that I see:

1) Louis' power to look at unrevealed Hunch cards might have to be reigned in. Maybe since it's a random pull, it will help him eliminate suspects, but he may not be able to eliminate them all. On the other hand, there is a small chance that in n-1 pulls (where n is the number of suspects), Louis will know exactly who the true killer is.

2) There's even less reason to have the First Player Token or "get a jump on the case". Maybe there can be some kind of re-tooling of that, or maybe the FPT can be cashed in for something. Turn order continues as normal until someone gets a jump on the case, which gives them the token, changes turn order, and lets them do whatever it is that cashing in the Token is good for (maybe a peek at the unrevealed Hunch cards?)

Anyway, as I said, it's just a thought experiment. I might try it out one of these days, just to see how it flies. Any thoughts or comments?