Why You Shouldn't Play CLUE Anymore
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ธ.ค. 2024
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The board game Clue is 75 year olds, and I've got six reasons why you shouldn't be playing it anymore, and six modern mystery games that are way more fun.
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🛒Links to buy:
1️⃣ Kronologic: Paris 1920 - geni.us/kronol...
2️⃣Mysterium - geni.us/mysterium
2️⃣a. Mysterium Park - geni.us/myster...
3️⃣ Deception: Murder in Hong Kong - geni.us/decept...
4️⃣Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective - geni.us/sherlo...
4️⃣a. Perspectives - geni.us/perspe...
4️⃣b. Chronicles of Crime - geni.us/chroni...
5️⃣ Paranormal Detectives - geni.us/parano...
6️⃣ Outfoxed - geni.us/outfox...
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CREDITS:
Edited by Joaquin Reinoso
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RELATED VIDEOS:
Perspectives Review: • Top 10 Board Games of ...
Chronicles of Crime Review: • 10 Board Games for Peo...
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You forgot “Tim Curry not included in board game version.”
That's definitely number 7 on the list. What a legend.
So what would the 7th game be??
@@sarahwatts7152 The Clue Movie
That should be really the one and only problem with Clue.
Smashing!
In Clue, it IS possible to get information on other players turns. Not every turn, but frequently. Example: if an opponent proposes Colonel Mustard with a wrench in the Conservatory, and you have Mustard and Wrench in your hand, then any card shown MUST be Conservatory.
Or if nothing is shown you know it is the conservatory
Thank you you also if you had seen it from somebody else and someone else shows a card you know it’s not that card if it’s not the person who had operation you something it’s quite an observational game. Also, it’s good too if you have two of them to whittle down, the third item have two in your hand if you can change up, which one if you have more than one person or weapon also there’s always the hidden passages going back-and-forth to get more guesses, especially if you have one of the rooms fits connected to the hidden passageway
@@shellnet411 exactly. If you don’t there are some rooms that are close together as well that you can get more guesses in. And you can guess if someone moves your character
This is how my family plays. Absolutely cutthroat Clue. 😂 Everyone is taking notes on almost every turn!
@@Ransom1941You mean…the right way?
I used to dislike Cluedo immensely, but then was forced to play it while working with kids.
And then I realised how much gameplay is happening on other people's turns and you can deduce the contents of the envelope without asking a single question - which makes the movement aspect less frustrating.
I think of it more like a game of Poker than a mystery game.
If you're good enough, there's never a turn in clue where you don't learn something. Any time any player asks something, you may find out that one or more players do not have any of the three relevant cards, and that someone does have at least one of them. Typically, i will learn more on another's turn than my own.
This. If you are only learning things on your turn, you're doing it wrong. My father recorded EVERYTHING that happened. Famously, he got handicapped to have no evidence cards and still dominated the game.
Personally, I mostly just note what people /don't/ have and occasionally use that to determine what they MUST have. Though it's been years since I played.
The dice and the factor of randomly getting pulled into distant rooms is actually what gives my family a chance to win in the first place.
I don't usually even write down _all_ of the information and they still don't like the odds of playing against me. I just note which cards players _don't_ have and that's enough to make a noticeable difference.
@@gildedbear5355 I like to make a record of which cards people might have.
An example of this is if someone asks for Mr. Green with the Rope in the Library, and I know the person asking has Mr. Green then I know the person showing has either the Rope or the Library.
I note that they have either of these using a shared number and when I locate one of them somewhere else I can change that to them specifically having the remaining one of the pair.
So if I discover that another player has the library I now know that this player must have the Rope despite never having seen it.
If you can't figure out how to track at least this information you are going to get your butt kicked at clue (unless of course you only play with children or this guy making the video)
This is why I usually win at Clue.
Add in the negotiation between players to move you to a room, or bargaining to keep you in the hall towards where you want to go, and you have Clue at my house. Books are used to cover where you are marking the received clue just to be safe. Yeah - we don't play at the kiddy league - haven't since we were kids.
CLUE is a fine game. It's not just about finding out the details of the crime, it's also about keeping the other players from doing so. Pulling a player who is close to a solution into another room may be annoying, but it is also tactics. I love CLUE, and I don't think it needs to be pitted against these other games as a means to promote those games. Each game can stand on its own merits.
That's how I have won 98% of my CLUE games.
Agreed, I appreciate hearing about these different games, but there's no need to dump on Clue for it. My family always plays Clue whenever we get together (it's just my mom, sister, and myself, so we only get the needed 3 when we gather), it's basically our tradition at this point! My mom and sister actually gifted each other Clue Master Detective (has more characters/rooms/weapons) one Christmas, which was pretty funny but also telling in how much the game means to us as something that brings us together.
agreed
You can love a bad game, there's nothing wrong with that. You can also find a bad game fun, especially if you have some nostalgia packed into it. But I would say relatively objectively speaking, its mechanics do not lead to a particularly fun game. Like from a modern perspective of having a choice of a lot of other games you can choose from, no, it does not stand well against other games nor even on its own.
@@myclamish I mean, it's hard to objectively define fun, so to say that its mechanics are not fun is inherently subjective because what is fun for some people is not fun for others. I find Clue fun because its rules and set up are relatively simple, which makes for an easy set up, while also having room for inventing house rules to customize the game for the group of players at the table. I find some modern games have a lot of set up and rule explanation, which may result in one round of fun gameplay, but has a higher bar of entry with the more complicated design. Personally I think this whole "good" or "bad" game rhetoric is nonsense; if the people playing the game are having fun, why does it matter if it's good or bad? If they don't have fun, they stop playing. It's not that complicated.
I'm sure those other games are fun, but Clue isn't as awful as you're trying to make it sound. For young kids, Clue is a great exercise in delayed gratification (or "deferring enjoyment" as you called it), goal setting, theory of mind (deducing what other people are thinking), and patience (sometimes the dice aren't in your favor, and it can cost you the game. C'est la vie.)
Older players can use advanced techniques like making strategic suggestions to mislead other players, slowing down opponents by needlessly dragging them into a distant room with an erroneous suggestion, and risking making a final accusation before you've marked off every other option (you can have a good hunch based on what other players say and do).
And don't forget, being in character is super fun! Clue can function as a vehicle for interactive improv. When someone suggests you were the murderer, act offended and say "How dare you, sir? Why, I've never held a firearm in my life!", and so on. You can play as a different character every time you play and take on a new personality with it. I played it that way with a group that included a person that wasn't very outgoing, and they ended up having a blast. They still quote moments from that game of Clue we played years ago.
Lastly, "simple" doesn't automatically mean "bad". Sometimes it's nice to play a board game that takes less than 60 seconds to explain to a new player. When I'm just trying to relax and have a good time, the last thing I want to do is listen to someone read 5 pages of rules and world-building, followed by a first round where we have to pause every few seconds to consult the rule book again.
Pretty good summary. I find that some players tend to get a bit snobbish when it comes to their games, which can sometimes keep them or others from playing something that they might actually enjoy.
As for rules, yes, I can certainly agree with you there. I'll also add that you want to get the *full* rules. Too many times I've seen someone who will teach a new player enough of the rules to play, but not enough to win. These players have tended to have personality traits that put off established players in the local gaming community, so they needed 'new fish' to keep playing.
But in terms of learning and teaching rules to new players, that can indeed be a challenge. In my group of friends, whenever we got together with a new game, they would be okay with me reading through the rules as we all kibitzed about whatever, and then I would summarize the rules as efficiently as possible. Over nearly 30 years, there was only one game that I was not able to do this with...and I could tell that the developers were trying their hardest to avoid ANY 'munchkinism' happening in the game as possible. (Which you can never be able to avoid, because if someone is determined to find a way to skirt the rules to win, they will find that way.)
My sisters and I played Clue when we were young, and over the years, we've played with our kids and grandkids, and they've all enjoyed it. We've always been a board game family, and we all split up into groups at family dinners, and play 2 or 3 games. It's such a great way for all generations to interact, everyone always has a good time, and some of the games have us all laughing until we're crying.
a quick look in the description makes me think he's been paid off to mouth off Clue
Cluedo/Clue is dead? I think it was Professor Plum in the Conservatory with the Lead Pipe.
It was Actualol, in the TH-cam, with a video.
@@TorIverWilhelmsen - Damn. I lose.
It was Mr Green with the gun in the hall, and now he's going to go home and make out with his wife
@@HayLeesHomeMadeI love this 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The day I start finding Clue boring will be the day Hell freezes over.
As someone who does board game meetups a lot I have to say that clue is awesome. Mainly because you don't really need to explain the rules because people know them already. If they don't it's pretty easy for them to learn.
Pretty easy to learn fits many games. Games that don't eat so much space on the shelf and don't have lost hallway turns
TLDR: Clue isn't a mystery game, it's a bluffing game.
1. Wastes your time? Even if you roll very badly, you can still watch your opponents to try to suss out what evidence they have or show or were shown. It's also one of the few grid-based games where you can move diagonally so that's something to speed it up.
2. Dull? Bluff and counter bluff.
3. Makes no sense? Chess, go, and a million other great games make way less sense.
4. Bad whodunnit? If you didn't already pick it up, it's not a mystery game. It's a bluffing game. Ever notice you can suggest cards in your hand?
5. Pointless restrictions? Limiting suggestions to the room you're in makes it so you have to commit to something when you're going to suggest things, giving more stuff to bluff with. Suggestions moving players is one of the main ways you interact with them, and one of the main ways to keep them from getting where they want to go (which only matters because it takes time to go from one room to another).
6. Can't play with young kids? What kind of sanitized life did you grow up with? There is no corpse, there is no blood, there is no description of the method.
Regarding 5, I've seen people ask to be accused in order to jump across the board in exchange for some kind of hint of something to ask in order to get information. Effectively two people getting two turns worth of set up based off one accusation.
Accuse me in this room, gets you some info and moves me, and you can tell me what weapon to ask about next opportunity I have to ask. Gets both players info on 2-6 things in exchange for getting another player where they need to go. Super helpful!
@@blackheart2728exept you can't do that, or you shouldn't (don't remember if there is a rule that you can't "talk" outside of the game, for things related to the game)
Also, to move across the board, there are secret passages, they created them with this intent
With 5, is that similar to "Sorry"? I remember getting frustrated with being moved at a party game 25 years ago. So, it was memorable, that's a good reason to have the game around.
You learn so much based on who asks what
I think I remember hearing somewhere the original lore for clue explaining how one of the players is the killer is that if that person wins, it signifies them destroying the evidence and escaping.
that's how i've always interpretted it. you're not playing as a professional detective you are guests at a dinner party where the host was murdered. you can't safely leave until the murderer's identity is discovered (or in the murderer's case you've successfully concealed all evidence).
That makes sense for people that really need it to make sense in cases where your character is the one that did it.
This was always my headcanon playing it as a kid
From what I remember it goes a little further. Nobody there can be sure which did it until they can solve it because everybody had motive and made attempts.
@@Quandry1 the older editions of the game used to have a lot of flavor text in the manual
I like Clue because of the restrictions, and taking a player who is close to solving it far away from their room is just good strategy
I did not realize I was a Clue apologist, or at least a Clue: Master Detective apologist, until watching this.
I was and still am. Its basically the only "normie" boardgame from the 20th century that gets better when you revisit it
We played Clue in Jail, good times.lol
I've always been a Master Detective proponent. I played a lot of it growing up at home, so going back to vanilla Clue felt so easy to me.
I think I've always been as well, yeah.
One of the best formats for suggesting games. Not a straight up review as such, but a clever way of putting games on people's radar, especially newbies. And we need more of those. Many more.
100%
Much prefer this to a big 20 minute review video on a board game. Love getting a bit of info on multiple games instead.
Could do without the constant sh*tting on clue though. Makes it seem like a one sided opinion
@@FabricatedPheonix Have you watched this channel often? It's just part of Jon's humour.
Clue was made for a different audience in a different time. It was made for families, not friends. There were probably six games in the entires house, no video games and maybe three channels on tv. It was played during snow days and power outages, so you WANTED it to take longer. Attention spans and delayed gratification were better
"The irony is, you're a detective - but you've got no agency."
That was so good it made me shiver
Hard agree. That was a great line.
Expect you are not a detective in cluedo
@@riccardomosena4162 this its social deduction not searching for clues, the clues are all already known you just have to determine which are right through a keen ear and some good questions.
@@riccardomosena4162 you function as one though. The original comment had nothing to do with the official occupation of the characters, it had to do with the fact that you are trying to gather evidence and figure out who the killer is, like a detective. Just because Colonel Mustard is a colonel, doesn't mean this has anything to do with war.
@@joshuahawley2073 yes, but not being a detective means you know less how to investigate.
If you immerse yourself in the game, you try to gather information, from both you and the other players, while keeping your findings a secret, not knowing if you can trust them.
It makes sense.
Everyone at the party could be the assassin, and if it happens to be you, you are simply trying to cover your tracks and mislead the others with your "guesses"
Do this again. Try 6 Alternative games to Monopoly especially as we are coming up to Christmas
Chinatown
I think he's already done one for Monopoly.
Not similar, but Camel Up has replaced Monopoly in my gatherings
THIS! Monopoly is so much worse than Clue! 😂
Lords of Vegas.
This... Is just completely off base if I'm gonna be honest. Point 1 makes sense, but point 2 is purely subjective and no one is playing Clue for the *immersion,* so the potential that it could be you doesn't really matter, nor does the story. Point 5 has a bit of weight to it, but point 6? Really?
If you wanted to frame the video as "Six games to play if you enjoyed Clue" that would be one thing, but you can't really make an attack on a game when 4 out of your 6 points are either subjective or wanting the game to be something that it's not.
THIS!
This omfg
It’s for engagement
Probably the best board game channel out there tbh
His combination of useful information and hilarious jokes makes him TRULY one of a kind 😊
I don’t even know on the drink this time, i’ll say Mai Tai but I know it’s not right.
Lol, I wish I was taking the time to make a Mai Tai. It was a much less impressive Fanta Zero.
@ Dang it I was going to guess Fanta but I was like he’s much too refined for that 🤪.
Probably? Surely my boi.
All these other games feel like detectives solving a crime.
Clue is supposed to feel like a group of house party guests trying to figure out what's going on, since the host is now dead. None of them are detectives, and all they have to go off of is the rumors that they, themselves, start.
You can ger information from every players turn if you are willing to note what was asked and who shared a card.
It is not easy, but with the right notations and dedication you can deduce what cards the other players have and avoid those questions.
I love this format, really helps me SELL the games to my family on the WHY they want to play it.
Yes that is always very handy to choose a boardgame to play
I really liked his video explaining how games have evolved and the appeal of Eurogames or why that style usually works. He said it's no fun for a person to keep playing a game for another hour or so with no chance of winning; or to be eliminated and have to wait for the rest to finish. It's not much fun for a game to go on seemingly indefinitely; there needs to be a time or turn limit. And so on.
My daughter loves Clue - started at 9, mainly to work on her deductive reasoning. (Wish we had known about Outfoxed) One of the changes to the game we made when playing was to add player token. It never made sense to me that you are also one of the killers - so we are all 'investigators' instead.
“Do you have any idea what that is?” “A Frayed Knot/Afraid not” hats off to you sir
Our Clue house rule: throw the dice out the window. Everyone gets 6 spaces they can move on their turn. Makes a much better game.
Not a bad idea. There doesn't seem to be a reason to do dice-based movement.
@@scottplumer3668to add a random element to the game
Clue DVD does away with dice rolling altogether... you can move one room per turn
If you're going to do that, why not just play the modern card based version of the game? It's an absolute blast compared with the original version as it really cuts out a lot of the crap that wasn't that fun to begin with. The game wasn't so bad decades ago, but it's one of those games that clearly shows it's age.
@@JedeOff The Talking Clue game is like that. Having 6 movement points tho creates a little bit of strategy on how you want to use them. I like that a bit more I think.
My favorite part of being the Ghost in Mysterium is ominously knocking as loudly as I can
Clue was always my favorite board game as a kid. Learned all about gruesome murder from it as a young 4-8 year old. Stopped playing board games for the most part after I grew up though. Some of these suggestions sound fun.
I share this deep disatisfaction with Clue, but my Mom loves classic Clue. As a compromise, we play Clue FX--an electronic "talking" version of the board game that fixes most of the problems with Clue without losing its core identity. It has the lush, gorgeous artwork of Mysterium and the public clues of Paris 1920. The suspects are completely different from the players' characters, and there is no wasted time moving from location to location. 😊
Love Clue FX. You are totally correct on your point
IMHO, the card based version of clue is the final evolution of the game. Something happens every time you have a turn, with very little wasted BS moving from room to room. Even with the secret passages, it can be a lot of wasted time moving around the board.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade I'll have to look into that; I didn't know there was a card game version of Clue!
Love that we got more character skits! (And games for varying ages)
you can totally gain tons of information through listening to what people have. asking questions is for clarifying not for gaining the real information. like have a list and when someone askes for cards when each person doesn't show a card you can eliminate those cards from those people and when someone shows a card that means they have one of the three cards possible. its a lot of work and you can fall behind if you aren't paying attention but I won so many games doing this.
Love Mysterium and have played it many, many times. But in my opinion, the best Cluedo replacement, hands down, is Awkward Guests. I'd recommend you give it a go as it adds quite a bit more to the basic idea and is much more enjoyable.
After playing Kronologic mentioned in the video recently, I'd say this game kills off Awkward Guests for me. AG is great, but a bit messy. Kronologic is cleaner and easier to teach, and just a bit more fun. Give it a go!
Except Awkward guests has infinite replayability @@photoben
Awkward Guests is on my to get list. They have a print and play you can download for free on their website.
I would also highly recommend The Search for Planet X if you're looking for that pen and paper elimination vibe
And there's always "Kill Doctor Lucky" if you'd prefer the murdering to the sleuthing
Came to look for this comment & leaving happy.
Our crew really enjoy Kill Doctor Lucky & comes out pretty regularly.
Kill Doctor Lucky is SO fun, and it contains actual tactics!
Love that you threw Outfoxed on here. My daughter was obsessed after her first play.
My daughter’s grandma has Clue Jr. at her house. I opened it up, looked at the manual, and put it back where it came from. Impossible for my daughter to play and way too dry and boring.
You finally brought back characters 😍 I’ve missed them ☺️
"A frayed knot, my dear boy."
🤣
that one got me good! 😂
Outfoxed is my standard recommendation for a kids game. So well done
I have never had an issue with playing Cluedo. It’s actually one of my favourite tbh. It’s probably why I love 221B Baker street so much, but it drags out a lot longer than Cluedo does. I really want to look for the Sherlock Consulting detective now. Cause man that sounds pretty cool.
When I was a kid, I didn't fully understand the way that the murders in clue could happen. Gun or knife was obvious, but blunt force trauma as a concept escaped me. lead pipe? I thought it was lead poisoning. The candlestick? burning someone with a candle. The rope? Tied up and left to starve. Some of those are more bleak than the original intention
I thought of lead poisoning too
My brain has always interpreted the rope as being hung rather than the (most likely intended method) of being suffocated.
My persona favorite strategy during the early game of Clue is when making a rumor I throw in a few or only cards I already have to try and throw someone off to make them think they already have the answer to potentially make them try and make an accusation and eliminate themselves to make things easier for me
So glad you're still out here making videos, love the channel, thanks for the content!
The best alternative for the Clue is Awkward Guests: The Walton Case. I dont want to translate ghost player mumbling. Just to crack the case. And Awkward Guests is the best. Of course on hardest difficulty and with app.
I was today years old when I learned the "ludo" in the name stands for the getting to the rooms part.
I always loved Cluedo as a kid but I could never get enough people to play it, and now I realise my lack of playing it is probably why I still have fond memories of it. Great alternatives suggested here, great video. 👍🏼
This is exactly what I like your videos most for. Explaining mechanics and ranting about the bad old times in a funny way. Keep up the good work!
When I a kid I was just IMPRESSED with Scotland Yard. Until this day I remember it as a super deep and mysterious game. I’m afraid to go back to it and see that it had the same design problems as clue, I guess haha
I dunno, I love Clue. Appreciate the alternatives. But Clue is OG.
My hubby hates Cluedo, might need to try some of these. Lovely to have you back and the new video format
You lost me the moment you said "that's unfair"😅😂
Love you bro. You helped me get into Boardgames
My biggest gripe with clue, and there are a few, is that people don't understand that you're working to solve the case but you are working against everyone else. Most of the time people just make suggestions of 3 things that they don't have cards for and it just turns into you figure out the info with only "knowing" half or less of the information. It is a game that's better to play with people who understand that. I will have times when I play I try and deceive people and when I narrow something down I stay away from it and make the others think differently. Most of the time I win too haha
"You've won.... twenty years in prison!" lol ;-)
Really love the video, but extremely surprised that awkward guests is not here. That game is literally designed to be a Clue killer xD. The theme and the movement around the house is all straight up the same but better
Agreed. Only issue I have with the game is that it absolutely doesn't fit bigger player counts. It's best played at 3-5 players.
@@AndréCarvalho-b4k I agree about 5 being the maximum player count but that is also already pushing it. I ahve actually played the game quite a bit with just 2 and surprisingly it was quite good I thought.
“Good God, man. Enunciate!” 😂😂😂
I laughed out loud at that!
Back to basics, I love it.
The kids game suggestion was really good and you should do more or even dedicated videos.
Regarding your content, you are a good comedian and using that to show how playing a game feels is a thing that many boardgame channels cannot do as well. They can describe as much as they want but showing through acting is a thing that you do way better.
Do not feel bad if sometimes videos do not perform as you expect. You have a good niche (less heavy games) and pick different games. I am sure that getting bigger audiences is a question of time.
Mystery Express is an exceptional Advanced Clue game. The removal of movement, plus the presence of 2 cards of each type (so you are trying to find the cards in each category that have only 1 cards out) really step things up several notches. I am surprised it didn’t make a “Clue replacement” list!
I found that Mysterium had a similar logic problem to Cluedo, it might be a thing between different versions, but when I played it, everyone solved their own murder and had to decide which was the real murder at the end. It just didn't make sense.
For a young audience, I reckon Small Detectives is pretty good, but sadly out of print. It's a similar mechanic to Cluedo in that you're uncovering suspects, and it has a different movement rule that means most times you can discover something, but you can also mess with opponents a bit
When I was a kid, we had a spinoff of Clue called Clue Mysteries. It took place in a city and each of the famous characters has their own building/business. There are 50 pre-set cases with different stories and culprits to play through, and there are different gadgets to help give you clues. There's a key with little holes that reveal letters, a red-tinted magnifying glass that uncovers secrets on cards, and a reflective aluminum mirror for backwards hints. Never got through many of the cases as a kid, but it was fun.
I also remember 1313 Dead End Drive, which was less of a mystery/whodunit game, and more of a "find treasure and escape the house alive" game. Had a lot of elaborate traps to activate on the board that kills the characters, like a falling boar's head, a trapped safe, launching staircase, a rotating fireplace. The problem with this game is it was a nightmare to set up. All the characters and game pieces were made of cardboard, so the more you play it, the more worn down they became. Really nice artwork on this game too, I had a "modern" version with funky character art and designs, but the older edition of the game looks good too
I love Clue, but your point about the moving through the halls is true. I’ve been stuck between rooms for several turns in a row, and that’s so frustrating.
Love Mysterium! Haven't played any of the others but have added a few new ones to my wishlist 🥰 Paranormal detective seems like a fun one 😂
Same here
Great picks! Was surprised not to see Awkward Guests
Shout out to Detective: City of Angels for being based on Hard Boiled detective stories.
There is also 5-Minute Mystery that hits the same nerve as outfoxed but is a bit more for adults I guess.
This is why house rules are the best. These are our rules:
No dice rolling everyone simply moves from an adjacent room to the next and asks a person a question, not the full table.
If the person can answer the question they provide the card in a trade with you rather than just showing you the card.
It seems you don't play Clue the way my family plays it. Sometimes we make guess just to try to throw off other players what we know and don't know.
Number six reminds me of a PC release of Clue during the nineties that would have cutscenes of the accused players killing Body from his perspective. One of them is getting lynched by the rope. They gave this away in cereal boxes.
Your ability to capture the essence of game and why it's great in such a concise way is unparalleled. I always come away from your videos wanting to guy ALL of them.
I still love Clue and will continue to play it in spite of your objections.
Glad you covered Outfoxed. My friend who designs board games (for adults) couldn’t recommend Outfoxed more for kids. Can’t wait until my kids are old enough for it.
Best supporting Actor goes to ... The Ghost!
Whenever I tried to explain to people why I don't like Clue, I've struggled conveying what you have here. Now I can just send them this video!
That video gave me a new appreciation for Cluedo.
Have you tried Clue Master Detective? The rooms are clser together, you roll two dice instead of one die, there is an additional secret passage, rooms count as a space, and there are special snoop spaces. I think this helps the game to move along faster. There are also more characters, weapons and rooms (three outside locations and a charrage-house/garage).
Also, all players start in the cloakroom (center of the board). This makes it so all players start in the same place without starting nearer to any specific room.
I really appreciated this video as a fan of clue boardgame. And also, I loved the fact that you included one for kids (this is really great for christmas presents)
At a Halloween event we played Mysterium. Me being the ghost, under a white sheet and cut out holes for eyes.
Kill Doctor Lucky is also a suggestion as a way better game than Cluedo, but in reverse!
I've played Mysterium at least two times and I hate it. It's just so random.
Loved this video! You brought back the characters/personalities!! ❤
I love videos that suggest other games based on a game you like playing, thanks a lot! I'll deffinitely check a few of these out
Do you play Dominion? It's my favorite game but I have not seen it in your videos.
The only thing Clue is worth is the movie. I may have to get Outfoxed for my kiddo (totally not for myself).
I’m shocked you didn’t put Awkward Guest on this list.
I thought i heard him mentioning it as alternative for Sherlock
@ maybe I missed that part. I was multitasking while listening.
@@joukenienhuis6888 No, he mentioned Perspectives and Chronicles of Crime there
Or you could just play by the diceless rules of Clue... Each player gets 3 actions per turn. The player may skip actions, but the actions they do perform must be done in the following order: 1) move their pawn 1 to 3 spaces, 2) use a secret passage, 3) make a suggestion, 4) make an accusation. The last 3 actions above may only be done once, each, a turn. You could, however, move up to 9 spaces a turn.
Mysterium is always my go to for introducing people to the fact that more board games exist outside of monopoly, risk, and clue. It also shows them that board games can be cooperative as well. Safe to say that it is always a hit and many people pick up the concept easily enough due to it being similar enough to clue without being clue. Then usually they start asking what other games exist and i slowly build my deck of board game enthusiasts mwahahaha
16:50 Thanks Jon. I've been trying to keep myself youthful.
Great video
I know it isn't true because in the supermarket they tap "visibly over 25" when I buy alcohol 😢
I'm a bit surprised that he didn't mention the exploit you can do to confirm the details about the crime.
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1. Go to the nearest room that you have the card for.
2. Suggest a Suspect whose card you don't have, a Weapon that you do have, and that room.
3. If no one can show you that Suspect's card, they have to be the Killer.
4. Get to another room that you have. (You can also leave and re-enter the same room, although this will likely tip off your opponents to your strategy)
5. Repeat the process for the Weapon, switching in the Suspect that you confirmed in the previous step or another Suspect that you have. Weapon confirmed.
6. Move to different rooms as necessary, repeating the process to confirm the room.
7. Accuse and win.
This works regardless of how many players there are, although it's much easier to get away with this if there are fewer players because you'll have more cards and thus fewer options to rule out.
Clue is my favorite board game of all time and I love it. But master detective Clue is a great updated version. More rooms, weapons and suspects, and an added rule where you have to put 4 cards in 4 random rooms! So if someone says they don't have anything, it could be one of those. And there's also less spaces between rooms so a guess will be made most turns!
"You win the game... and the chance to play it 100 more times that weekend." Can confirm that is absolutely true.
But now that my kid is starting to outgrow Outfoxed and taking an interest in Clue (or bloody murder), I introduced him to an old Clue spinoff I inherited called The Great Museum Caper, a decent hidden movement game where one player is a thief stealing paintings and the others are the Clue characters trying to locate and catch them. It's probably out of print, but if it could scratch the Clue itch, the hidden movement genre may be another direction for Clue alternatives.
Another great cooperative mystery game for families is Whoodunit by Ravensburger - it's similar to Clue/Cluedo in that you're moving around the house on your turns, but it's a much more compact board (basically they removed the hallways). It's a similar premise to Outfoxed (find a thief, not a murderer) but more engaging for the adults in the family since you have to keep track of the clues.
There’s also another Sherlock Holmes board game which is great fun, without as much reading. It also has clue cards, but some of them are red herrings. There was a clue in one of the locations on the board, which was locked ( every time a player leaves, they lock the door behind them). So my brother and I were both trying to get there, I got there first, checked the card ( which was a red herring), left, thus locking the door behind me. My brother was almost at the entrance, but had to go all the way back to get the key, then all the way back to the clue place only to get a red herring. He wasted about 5 turns! My Dad always had a whole system for noting who showed/couldn’t show which card, that was frankly incomprehensible to me. The game set in 1920’s Paris looks like fun, I may get that as a family game this Christmas.
Actualol back to his best! Love the character work Jon! So glad you have your sparkle back buddy! Best board game channel! Thanks pal! ❤️
As far as Biarx games channels go it's a gooden
@ttocsisme what's Biarx mean?
Probably my favorite game that I bring to meetings every time is _"P.I."_ which plays 2-5 (but 2 is not fun). You try to get the best score by solving 3 cases, each time guessing the suspect, crime and hideout cards held by the person on your right. You mainly pick from one of nine face-up cards of the 14 locations, 12 suspects and 10 crimes. The person on your right then tells you whether you guessed correctly (you get a disc), guessed adjacent to the card (you get a cube) or are cold (you keep the card in front of you).
If none of the nine cards will help you, then you can use one of your five private investigators to go to a location and get cubes and discs for all three cards, but not learning which is which. They can only be used once over the three cases and are the tie-breaker.
Once you think you've figured it out, you can take a turn to make the accusation. If you try to solve a case and fail, you take a -2 penalty but can keep playing. If you solve your case first you get 7 points (so maximum for three cases is 21). If you solve your case on the same turn you also get 7. The next time someone solves their case they will get 5 (then 3, then 1). Normally, the last person doesn't get to solve their case, but that wasn't fun, so we use the house rule that they get 1 or 2 more turns, depending on their order, to either get the same points (solving on the same turn), or 2 less.
The suspects and crimes on the board are randomly placed, so we nearly always shuffle them and place them in new positions for the next case. The other drawback for this game is the fonts and colors on the board can make it difficult to see the locations, though suspects generally have distinctive colored backgrounds on their cards.
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There were other detective games that I played as a kid, tried to play, or wanted to play:
Long before eBay we got _Manhunt_ at a garage sale, but it was missing pieces or instructions so we never played a full game. It has a way for a player to secretly find information like it seems _Kronologic_ does. But it only has 16 scanner cards for cases, so limited like the one shown in this video. We tossed it when we moved.
I got to play _Electronic Detective_ as a kid. Basically you go around town to find information and punch it into the computer to see what the result is. I picked up a working device at a thrift store, but it was missing the cards and maybe instructions, so without internet and eBay to get the missing ones, we tossed that one too. Too bad, because it's said to have more cases than you could possibly ever play.
Another game that came out in the era of handheld electronic games, was _Stop Thief._ I don't remember playing that or getting that either.
Enjoyed this video and your take on Clue. I've played a few of the alternatives mentioned and thought they were great. Will have to try some of your other picks as well. I still love Clue, however, even if it has some of the drawbacks described. A lot more going on than I think folks give it credit for.
Love the format!! Some new ones for my wishlist
"I don't know how old you are, but you look 25" an excellent stratagem, well-implemented
The one and only channel which I like the clip before I start to looking it. Because it's obviously a great watch.
Fantasy Flight Games‘ „Android“ would be my honorable mention for two reasons:
1. only honorable mention because it‘s no longer available
2. the game is completely different, save for the premise of „who dunnit“:
The murderer isn‘t predetermined by the game, but instead the detectives determine this by going to different locations, finding evidence that either increases or decreases suspicion and then choose which of the suspects they will associate this with - either publicly (face up) or secretly (face down) - and that‘s just scratching the surface.
Unlike all the games you mentioned it is not a fast paced game but instead a long game that will take you half a day to play one session - but at no point it bogs you down or takes agency away like clue.
Not for everyone, but definitely a great game I thought I should mention.
"... can play with 4-8yr olds, unlike Clue, which may give them nightmares." Me in the 80s playing Clue when I was 6-7.
Love your channel. It occurred to me during your Outfoxed review that, as a relatively new parent whose kid is just starting to get into board games, if you made a 'Top 10 Board Games to play with your Kid" (Maybe even a couple, one for toddlers, and one for ~6-13 years old), I'd probably use your affiliate links for every single game I didn't already own. (And if you already have a video like this, please point me to it!)
Same but for Xmas presents 😂
This format (they like X - so here is the improved version Y) would be useful too.
A couple of weeks ago, there was a TH-cam channel posting telling me I was sifting my cat’s kitty litter wrong. All these years I didn’t realize I was unbalancing the state of the World, by my behavior. Thankful to the TH-cam postings for pointing out all of my personal misgivings, and showing me what is right, and what is wrong. Things are a wee bit more complicated than I thought.
The key in clue is to ALWAYS use at least one of your own cards in a guess to narrow down the information.
E.g I'm in the study. My cards are Scarlett, revolver, study, ballroom. I might say Scarlett in the study with the rope.
Goes around the table and no-one shows me any cards. I now know the rope is the weapon.
Lovely video. thank you that you make videos despite the troubles. they always puts a smile on my face.