Hasbro – Clue: Treachery at Tudor Mansion, An Escape & Solve Mystery Game [Review]

A killer is you.

Location:  at home

Date Played: August 2023

Team size: 1-6; we recommend 1-4

Duration: 90 minutes

Price: about $16.99

REA Reaction

Clue: Treachery at Tudor Mansion combines the mechanics of a board game with the game flow of a tabletop escape game, with delightful results. Fans of the classic board game will recognize the setting, characters, and deductive gameplay of Clue, but this iteration adds a layer of collaborative puzzle solving. Instead of racing to deduce who killed Mr. Boddy and how, players work together to investigate his mansion, uncover clues, and recreate the crime in the finale.

Hasbro’s Escape & Solve Mystery format borrows elements from games like the Unlock! or Exit: The Game series, but also has a couple of notable differences. For one thing, we found that the game board and pawns enhanced our sense of investigating an actual physical location. Also, the turn-based gameplay allows each player an equal opportunity to decide what to search or solve next, which prevents any one player from steamrolling the game.

Clue: Treachery at Tudor Mansion provided a gentle challenge that would be ideal for families and/or casual puzzlers. Hasbro notes that it’s appropriate for ages 10 and up, but our team of grown adults enjoyed it just the same, and we spent nearly the full 90-minute play time suggested on the box. Because the mystery is always the same, this game can only be played once, but it’s easy to reset and pass along to a friend.

This twist on play-at-home escape games captured the fun of an escape room as well as the spirit of Clue. For anyone looking for a fun tabletop puzzle game that isn’t too demanding, Clue: Treachery at Tudor Mansion is worth investigating.

Who is this for?

• Mystery lovers
• Clue/ Cluedo fans
• Any experience level

Why play?

• Turn-based gameplay
• Collaborative solving
• To find out if you were the murderer

Story

Mr. Boddy invited six guests to his mansion for dinner—and then blackmailed us. Before long, he was found dead, and we needed to investigate the premises in order to crack the case and escape the mansion so we could bring the killer to justice.

Setup

Upon opening the box, a page of instructions sets the scene and prompts players to read the quick start section of the rules. This leads into the tutorial board, which continues directly into the main game.

The gameplay is so straightforward that we forgot to read the rest of the rules, only revisiting them later to clarify a couple things and make use of the hints provided in the back of the booklet.

Gameplay

Clue: Treachery at Tudor Mansion was a puzzle mystery board game with a fairly low level of difficulty (two out of five, according to the box). Core gameplay revolved around investigation, observation, deduction, and optional role-playing.

After choosing our characters and reading the intro story, we set up the first game board and card deck and began our investigation. We took turns choosing numbered items in the mansion to investigate and following the resulting threads. A turn could involve narrative cards, puzzle cards, item cards, clue cards, or overlay cards which changed the appearance of the board—or some combination of these. Puzzle solving was collaborative, and we usually needed more than one turn to acquire all the cards needed to solve a puzzle.

As the game progressed, more boards and card decks were introduced until the mansion layout and the story were complete and it was time to use what we’d learned to solve the murder.

Clue: Treachery at Tudor Mansion is not a timed game overall, but certain cards contain timed challenges.

Analysis

➕ We were surprised by how much Clue: Treachery at Tudor Mansion felt like investigating a real-life escape room. Card-based escape games are only so immersive, but the addition of the game board and pawns helped situate us in the setting of the story a bit more. Expanding the game board over several acts also provided an exciting sense of progress.

➕ The turn-based gameplay worked brilliantly. Not only does this mechanic harken back to the original Clue board game, but it also keeps overbearing players from taking over the game. Taking turns gave structure to our investigation and let everyone have a chance to choose what we did next.

➕ Reading out loud was built into the instructions and the game cards. Reading in a puzzle game can sometimes become tedious, but these snippets of text were short enough to fit on a playing card, which kept the story engaging and fast-moving.

➖ In some instances when we made a mistake we’d draw a dead-end card, as the game intended, but other times when we drew an incorrect card, it turned out to be a clue or item meant for later in the game. Also, in one case when we were choosing between three possible answers, two of them pointed to the same numbered card, which clearly indicated that they were both incorrect. Gameplay would have felt smoother if there were unique numbered dead-end cards for all of the most common incorrect answers.

❓ Clue: Treachery at Tudor Mansion included a very small dose of random family board game antics. In a few cases, the game asks you to perform goofy real-world actions (such as standing perfectly still until your next turn), usually after making a wrong move. We only encountered this once and decided to ignore it because it felt extraneous to the game, but some groups may find it fun.

➕ Most of the puzzles were simple enough that advanced solvers could make short work of them. But they weren’t trivial or boring, and they were only one part of the gameplay. And even with just paper components, Hasbro included a neat trick or two that changed how we saw the game.

➕/➖ Some of the clues we found were optional, helping to bolster our case but not required to solve the crime. This variability gave us a sense of ownership over our particular route of investigation. However, a couple of the optional clues only made sense after reading the explanation, which made them feel a bit like red herrings.

❓ We played as a team of two, but by chance one of us turned out to be the killer. There’s a certain ludonarrative dissonance when you’ve spent an hour trying to solve a murder only to find out you were the killer all along. However, anyone familiar with the classic Clue board game already knows and accepts this possibility.

➕ Clue: Treachery at Tudor Mansion is a single-play game, but nothing is destroyed during play. All the cards are numbered and color-coded, which makes the game easy to reset for the next group of players.

Tips For Players

• Space Requirements: a small table
• Required Gear: a timer for timed challenges
• The instructions are so simple that confident players probably don’t need to bother with them past the quick start—and we found that skipping them made the game more unpredictable, in a good way.

Buy your copy of Hasbro’s Clue: Treachery at Tudor Mansion, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.