All Clued up! (Hasbro Cluedo Mysteries)

Member Name: Lunah_C

Product:	Hasbro Cluedo Mysteries
Date:	12/09/06 (693 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Esay to follow game for all.

Disadvantages: None, unless you are colourblind.

Wanting to spend some more time together as a family playing games rather than us all hiding in various rooms with out PCs, gameboys and Playstations, I decided to invest in a couple of board games.

One of my favourite all time games is called 221b Baker Street. It was one of those games that could be found in a back street shop and as a result never took off. The idea was to solve mysteries along the lines of Cluedo with clues being given throughout the game to lead you to the solution.

My game has been with me for some years, and has had to endure a number of moves, 4 children and a husband, so needless to say it is, like me, no longer all there! It is also more aimed at older children and adults.

Seeing this game called Cluedo mysteries I wondered if it was in any way similar. Reading up a bit on it led me to believe it was and so off to Argos I sent hubby to purchase it.


~~~PRICE~~~

We paid £24.99 for the game, which to be honest is a little overpriced in my opinion. But this does seem to be the cheapest the game is available.



~~~THE GAME~~~

The game is made by Parker, a leading name in Board Games. The company, founded in 1888, has been the name behind many top games, the most successful being Monopoly. The company has been bought out by many others over the years and is now owned by Hasbro, though the Parker name is still used on many games.

The game is designed for ages 8 to adult, and can be played by 2 – 6 players. The game time seems to average to about fifteen minutes, so is ideal for those with poor concentration. It also means you can fit in several games and hopefully all will get a chance to win. We have played the game with 2, 3 and 4 players and the game doesn’t seem to take any longer by adding players.

The game consists of a board, which is very different in design to the traditional Cluedo board. Around the board are 8 buildings, each belonging to the characters associated with Cluedo such as Mrs White, Colonel Mustard etc. Between the houses are pathways, or as described in the game, open road spaces. Houses have either two, three or four paths leading to them depending on their position on the board.

At the beginning of each game, each player is given a detectives folder. This is simply a piece of cardboard designed to hold your notebook sheet and keep it from prying eyes.

As well as the board, there are 8 character folders, in the design of houses, from which you gather clues. Each has a wheel that needs to be turned at the start of each game. On one side there is a number, on the other the clue. To stop the clues being accidentally seen and read, and to make the game more exciting the clues can only be read either by using the spyglass, the secret mirror or the location key.

There are four discs called scene tokens. These must be placed at the entrance to the four houses in the corners of the board at the start of the game. The discs cannot be passed and are only used when making an accusation.
In order to start a game, one player must read a mystery from the Casebook (also the Instruction manual). There are 50 cases to be solved, so it should take a while to go through them all. From the ones we have played so far, no one is killed off or injured, so it makes the game more child friendly than the original version.

At the end of the case, players are told what information they need to discover. These will be a ‘who’, as in who done it, and a ‘where’, as in where they are now hiding. The who will be one of the 12 suspects, that can be seen on the inside of the detective folder, and the where will be one of the four places found on the discs, being, The parade, bus, fair and cart. Which ever one of these places is the ‘where’ in the game, is the disc you must be on to make your accusation.

Players take it in turns to move around the board, starting at the Town centre space in the middle. If you land on an open road space you must pick up a card. These usually move you to another spot or tell you to move the scene tokens. By moving these strategically you can block the path of opponents, meaning that it will take them longer to get around the board. There are four vehicle spaces on the board. If you land on these you can move to any other space. Then there are the building spaces, or the houses.

When you land on, or in most cases go directly to one of these, then you can check out the clue on the corresponding character wheel. Unlike 221b Baker Street, the clues are quite straightforward, making them easy for younger ones to understand. The clues are along the lines of ‘It was definitely a woman’ or ‘They did not have grey hair’. If your child can read and can play ‘Guess who’, then they should easily be able to follow the idea of this game. I think it does get a little bit more difficult as the game goes on, and a liar will be thrown in for good measure, however Inspector brown will always advise you of who you can and can’t trust.

When you get your clue, you can then start eliminating suspects. From the twelve people you are given, which are the original six and then six new faces, you must decide ‘who’ committed the deed. So if for example Mrs peacock told you the person was not wearing glasses, then you would cross off all those that were wearing them. Eventually you will have one person and this will be the person you can accuse.

Since the board is small and often the cards move you directly to buildings it does not take long to get around and receive all the clues. This is why the game can be quite short, but still very enjoyable.

The winner is the first person to make the correct accusation, and like the original game, if you guess wrongly, you are out the game and the guessing will continue.


~~~OVERALL OPINION~~~

We have all enjoyed this game and have thoroughly enjoyed playing it. I cannot think of any problems with the game, and ways in which it could be improved.

I think the only problem that could be encountered is when reading clues through the spyglass. The spyglass itself is red and by putting it over the wheel, it makes the blue writing on a mottled red background stand out. This may possible be an issue with anyone who is colourblind, but other than that this game is suitable for all.

Summary: Great game using eliminating clues to find the suspect