London: Twilight's Game – variations on a theme

LONDON: ‘Twilight’s Game’ – variations on a theme is a suite of Cold War themed strategy games using progressively building, but eminently simple, rules in which two or more adversaries seek to outmanoeuvre and/or best their opponents on a squared grid nominally representing the London of Len Deighton’s and John Le Carre’s twilight world of spy fiction.

In the basic game, two Players take turns to place and move their agents on a 54-square grid comprised of six 3-by-3 tiles. There are three types of square:

‘Normal’ locations (in the basic game there are forty these).
‘Black bag’ squares (there are eight of these, more than one on some of the tiles and none on a few others)
‘Tube’ (London Underground) locations (the basic game has just six of these, all on different tiles.)


More advanced variants of the game include the following additional types of space:

Taxi spaces
London bus spaces
Telephone box spaces
Safehouse spaces


The basic game is for 2 Players. The first variant allows 3 or 4 Players to play with accordingly different board configurations and some simple changes to the basic two-player rules.

Have you got what it takes to be the ultimate spymaster in the treacherous and murky World of Deighton and Le Carre’s twilight city?

Components (the items needed to play):

The Print & Play gameboard tiles (available in the files section)
24 wooden playing pieces (tokens, pawns or blocks etc) [six each of four different colours]
The rules.
A set of numbered 'stickers' to differentiate an adversary’s agents for some of the advanced variants in the Suite.


Optional: a printed playmat picturing a map of central London onto which the gameboard tiles can be placed.

Objective of the game and how to play:
In the basic two-player game the winner is the Spymaster who can manoeuvre three of their four agents off their adversary’s edge of the board. These spies are deemed to have infiltrated their opponent’s agency (SIS or KGB). The 3/4-Player versions of the game bend these objectives slightly – although a choice is provided in the rules as to how this is done. Players take turns to move one of their spaces. The regular move is one orthogonal space. However, this can be extended in one of three ways:

A spy moving onto a ‘Black bag’ location has to move on quickly (they do not want to get caught!) – such a piece can move a further space, again only orthogonally.
A spy moving onto a ‘Tube’ (London Underground) space may on a subsequent turn move from that space to any other ‘Tube’ space. They will then have the choice to remain in that new location or move a further space/spaces before completing their turn per the normal rules for moving.
A spy can make a ‘jump-type’ move over an adjacent agent. Such moves still need to be orthogonal but can be ‘chained’ for a spy to move longer distances and the pieces being jumped over can be one’s own or an adversary’s.


Spaces spies are moved to must be vacant. No spy – friendly or otherwise – can share the same space. (That would be poor Tradecraft!)

No diagonal move is allowed in the basic game and Players are not allowed to “Pass” their turn. Nor can a spy's move be ‘reversed’ in the immediately following turn.

A little information about the variants
One of the more advanced variants of the game described in the rules allows for the elimination of enemy agents. A Spymaster skilled, or lucky enough, to kill two enemy agents automatically wins that variant – although there are further variants that allow for even this to be otherwise. Spies can only be killed adjacent to ‘Black bag’ locations.

Players cannot move an adversary’s spies in the basic game. One of the variants described however allows for this. Further variants introduce additional types of space – for example the ‘Taxi’ space allows a spy to move to any space within the same tile or to any space, depending on the value associated with the ‘Taxi’, up to 1-2 tiles away. Another variant introduces “values” for the spy pieces and a further variant introduces the idea of “missions”. There are twelve of these. For example:

'One of your spies must visit two safehouses.’
‘Each of your spies must travel at least once by bus.’
'None of your spies must enter the central square of a tile.'


Both the above variants provide options for introducing additional game mechanics reflective of a need for bluff and counterbluff intrinsic to the murky world of Cold War espionage activity. For instance, the variant introducing the attribution of values to spies allows for pieces passing over an enemy agent to gain “intelligence” on that agent's value.

Players can choose which different variants and/or optional rules they wish to incorporate in their game play. The game is suitable for Players aged 8 to 80+. Several games can be played inside 30 minutes even using combinations of the different variants.

The rules of the game and each of its variants can be found in the files section – as can several different versions of the gameboard tiles, the “Mission” Variant cards and other sundry items that can be used to assist in playing the game.

—description from the designer