What the heck is Cluedo?

This week I went down a Clue rabbit hole. 

In Clue, there are cards representing characters, weapons and rooms. One card from each category is randomly placed in the case file and left in the center of the board. The object of the game is to use the process of elimination to deduce the contents of the case file. Players move their tokens around the floor plan of a Tudor mansion, making suggestions and consulting secretly with other players who are able to disprove your theory of the case. When you feel like you've eliminated all the other possibilities, you make an accusation naming a character, a weapon and a room. You look at the case file and if your accusation is correct you show everyone the case file. If you got it wrong, you put the cards back in the case file and you no longer take turns in the game, but you remain at the table to consult with other players when you have a card that will help them. 

Clue was my favorite game to play with friends when I was 10 or 11 years old. I hadn't played it in a very long time, so I thought I'd give the PC game Clue/Cluedo a try. Then I decided since the board game is less than $10 at Walmart, I'd force my family to give it a try. Then while trying to find out what ClueDo (Clue-doh) was, I discovered there is an official mobile app version and decided this blog entry would not be complete without including all available formats.

I'll start with the PC game available on Steam for $16.99. 

Main menu for the PC Game

I played in single player mode the first few times I played to refresh my memory about how the game works and make sure my inexperience with it wouldn't frustrate online players later. 

In single player mode, you are playing against 2 AI characters. This makes the game go pretty quickly. If you want to play against more characters, you have to purchase them.

Single player lobby--I'll be playing against two AI characters.

I play as Peacock whenever possible because blue is my favorite color. My affection for blue is almost pathological. The game kept prompting me to update my clue sheet. I wasn't sure what that was about. When I played the game as a child, the only thing on the clue sheet was the list of characters, weapons and rooms and you crossed them off as you were shown them. You could try to deduce a players' cards by what suggestions prompted them to show a card to other players, but there was no formal way to track that. Now in all versions of the game, the clue sheet has columns to help you track it. 

Having played in single player mode, I decided to try to play online. I didn't have any friends to invite to a game, so I had to be content with playing with random strangers. There's no ability in the game to

Multi-player online lobby. The game will begin when enough players have joined.

chat with other players and tease them or enjoy the kind of interaction that makes board games so much fun. That's the main reason I wanted to try the board game with my family, but more about that later.

There's ominous music and environmental sound effects in the PC game that help a little bit with creating the mystery of the board game, but they don't make up for lacking personal interaction.

While researching Cluedo (the name for Clue in Great Britain), I discovered the existence of the mobile app ($4.99 from Google Play Store). How could I leave that out of my review? 

Right away, a major difference in the mobile app is that we get some back story. Boddy Black has 

invited everyone to his home for a dinner. By the end of the evening, Boddy is dead and we're thrown into a sort of cosy, closed house genre of mystery, a la Agatha Christie. This, added to better music, sound effects and graphics made the mobile app a better experience than the PC game. 

Hall in the PC Game

Hall in the Mobile App

In the mobile app, when you play the single player game, you get a full complement of 5 opponents at no extra charge. I worried about the clue sheet being too small, but it's really easy to zoom in and scroll without inadvertently tapping things you didn't mean to tap. The characters in the mobile app are based on the classic game. (In the board game, Mrs. White has been replaced with Dr. Orchid.) Also, in the mobile app the characters are more diverse. In the PC game, once you pay for DLC, you can customize your avatar, so characters in the online game come in all kinds of shapes and colors. I played against a Frankenstein Mr. Green, a Mr. Gray with the username Moriarty who was dressed in a Victorian three piece suit and carried a cane and a Mr. Burnette who wore a turban. The board game comes in many editions, so it may not be fair to judge its diversity based on the Classic edition I purchased. In the board game, characters depicted in the materials are mostly white. They are represented by pawns, but there is some backstory for them.

Another thing I liked better in the mobile app is the way the characters moved. They clicked on each square as they moved while in the PC game they sort of just fly at break-neck speeds to their destinations.

I felt like the mobile app did a better job of capturing the mood of the board game.

Now for the board game. 

Player backstories

I sat down to play with my husband, my adult children and my adult niece. Only my husband and I had played Clue before, but neither of us remembered much of the rules. We were basically starting from scratch and there were a couple of hiccups. Players had to be reminded to show their clue cards only to the the person who made the suggestion. After about 20 minutes, my niece said she was bored so she made an accusation she knew was wrong to exit the game. She didn't want to sit waiting for the game to end, so we institued a house rule that a player would randomly distribute their cards to the remaining players. She wound up sitting and watching us play anyway, though.

Board and pieces

As with Ticket to Ride, some players said it was too complicated, but they figured it out after a round of play. My daughter had a problem with the possibility that her character was the murderer. She insisted she should know if her character was the murder so she could role play appropriately. She got over it. No one actually role played, anyway. While I wouldn't say my family loved the game, we did laugh and talk and have an enjoyable shared experience. Isn't that the point of board games?

Perhaps it was the attitude of the people I was playing with, but of all the versions I evaluated, the mobile app best captured the feeling I remember of playing as a child. 

Now I'm off to watch Clue the Movie.