Clue is a murder mystery game developed by British board game designer Anthony E. Pratt. The premise of the game revolves around the murder that took place, and players must move around a board, which represents multiple rooms and segments of the mansion, to discover information that would allow them to narrow down on who committed the crime, where the crime took place, and with what weapon the crime was committed with. Ultimately, the mechanics of the game (which will be described below) create a narrative of decreasing ignorance on the mysterious happenings within the house, as players became more and more aware of the details of the murder as more rounds are played and more guesses are made. The narrative is front and center as the mystery cards are centered in the middle of the board, awaiting to be open when one believes they have found out the murder details, but finding out the truth comes with tension and a slight stress as you are racing to figure out the details amongst your competitors.
The main game loop embodies many of the mechanics of the game. There are 9 rooms on the board, and in order to make a guess about the murder a player must be inside one of these rooms (and can only make a claim that involves that room as one of the 3 murder details). On each player’s turn, if they are in a room, they are allowed to make a guess. If the player to their left has any of the three elements in their guess, they must show them the card to disprove them. If they do not, then then the next player clockwise must try to disprove the guess, and this cycle continues until someone disproves the guesser or no one can disprove them. The players rotate and try to make these guesses that would narrow down their options as to the real murder (whose three cards are located in the center room and hidden inside an envelope).
The general game arc that builds suspense in Clue is that as more and more rounds pass, players’ strategic guesses and the corresponding revelations other players make to them regarding said guess narrow down the possibilities of the murder details. Each player moves from room to room to gather more information about the murder, and their journey in narrowing the possibilities may come with ease but often with unique challenges and twists and turns, as prior beliefs are altered by new information and revelations, as players may show a guesser a card that he or she believed was not yet ruled out (or another player may have shown a card to someone else that you believed was one thing, but was actually something else). Overall, at the beginning, all players are quite ignorant of the murder suspect, the weapon, and the room, but the first several rounds are accompanied by each player attaining more knowledge about those possibilities. Later rounds may be accompanied by players finding out surprising information that may change their guesses or beliefs, and the latter of the game is filled with tension as players race to either get last minute information if they still have some uncertainties or risk some of those uncertainties to make a guess and win the game.
The arc sets up that tension we see in the end and the fact that each player only has one guess before seeing the real 3 murder details inside the envelope really forces them to make a decision between trusting their gut when they are ready or continue playing to find more information.
