CLUE Secrets & Spies board game review

November 7, 3:27 PMChicago Children's Toys ExaminerRenée Carver

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  CLUE Secrets & Spies is a fun strategy game that has completely
different rules than the classic CLUE board game.
(credit: Renée Carver)

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The CLUE Secrets & Spies board game is an enjoyable strategy game for 2 to 6 players ages 9 and up that has little to do with the classic Parker Brothers CLUE board game except for the names of its characters. Players work anonymously as international spies to collect points by completing missions and setting up secret meetings around the world before any agent's score marker meets up with Agent Black's score marker.

For our review, we were sent a copy of the new CLUE Secrets & Spies board game. It comes with a game board, 42 activity cards, 6 Secret Identify cards, 15 Secret Meeting cards, 18 Mission Cards and Quick Rules cards, 2 'X' tokens, 7 item tokens, 7 movers, 7 score markers, and a small black light spy light with which younger children will enjoy conducting CSI: Suburbs missions in dark rooms around the home.

The CLUE Secrets & Spies game board shows world cities
to which the secret agents travel, spaces above each
Criminal League for Ultimate Espionage agent where
Mission tokens can be placed, and the score track up which
the agents' markers travel and down which Agent Black's
score marker travels. (credit: Renée Carver)

How to play CLUE Secrets & Spies board game

Each player begins with 1 red Secret Identity card, 3 green Activity cards, 1 purple Mission card, and 1 gold Quick Rules card. Players do not reveal their secret identities until the end of the game when points are being tallied. During turns, players can activate and use any of the agents on the board, including Agent Black. (All agents must be used once before any can be used a second time.)

Players score points in two ways – through missions and meetings. Each Mission card shows two objects, such as a diamond and a gun. To complete the mission, players must pick up the tokens for these items from the different cities on the board and/or use Activity cards to swap, steal, or give them so that one agent ends up holding both together.

Gold Quick Rules cards provide each player with a quick
reference for how to play the game. The spy light is shined
on blue Secret Meeting cards to reveal the name of the
agent who must travel to the city on the card. Players are
each assigned one of the six Secret Identify cards. Green
Activity Cards describe moves players can take to travel
between the cities on the board or move Mission items
between secret agents. Purple Mission cards tell players
which two Mission tokens to group to complete the mission.
(credit: Renée Carver)
 

To complete a secret meeting, players must go to the city mentioned in the Secret Meeting card on display. Once there, they use the spy light to reveal to themselves the name of the agent who must attend the meeting. Then they must arrange for that agent and at least one other agent to be present in that city together, at which time all agents attending the meeting score a point and the organizer keeps the card.

Each time an agent scores a point, the score marker of the matching color gets moved a space up the side of the board. Any time a player activates and uses Agent Black for a turn, Agent Black's marker moves one space down. The game ends when his marker meets that of any of the other agents. At that time, players count their completed missions and meetings and move the agent score marker that corresponds with their secret identity that many spaces more up the side of the board. The player whose marker scores the highest wins.

Once players have mastered the game, they can arrange to have text messages sent to their phone that will provide random extra directions 6 times during the game. Hasbro has promised to maintain the ability to send these messages to game owners through 12/31/11. Luckily, players can have plenty of fun with the game without this extra layer of complication.

Any player can use any of the colored agent movers to
move secret agents around the different world cities on the
game board. The corresponding cardboard score markers
move up (and down) the score track that runs along the
side of the board. (credit: Renée Carver)

CLUE Secrets & Spies board game review

The game play and scoring for this Parker Brothers board game may seem confusing at first, and players will definitely find their Quick Rules cards useful references during the first few times they try to play this game. Once players make sense of how to move around the board (players must select and play Activity Cards from their hands, which give directions like "Move 1 or 2 cities") and how to collect and move Mission objects between agents (again, players must play Activity Cards that give directions like "Steal an item from another agent"), they can start using strategy to decide whether to focus on completing a Mission or arranging a Meeting. Ultimately, players will become proficient enough to arrange matters so that their secret identity agent will collect as many points as possible without tipping off other players.

CLUE fans expecting CLUE Secrets & Spies to be a secret agent version of CLUE played around the countries of the world will be disappointed (though they will be amused by the agent biographies that describe Agent Scarlet as a specialist in seduction and Agent Plum as a hacker). However, people who enjoy challenging strategy games, logic puzzles, and espionage will have a lot of fun acting as different agents and pulling strings to complete missions and meetings.

The Mission tokens held by any agent are placed in the
spaces above that agent's picture. Players can use
Activity Cards to steal a Mission token from another agent,
swap Mission tokens between agents, or give a Mission
token to another agent. (credit: Renée Carver)

The strong point of this game is the way it requires players to think ahead to figure out the best way to move Mission objects to one agent or to gather agents together in a specific city. The weakest point is the scoring, just because it is complicated to understand at first and because the rule that no two score markers can occupy the same space means that an agent who seemed hopelessly behind can suddenly vault to the lead simply because several spaces above him or her are blocked by other score markers.

Families just beginning their collection of Family Game Night board games will want to track down a classic CLUE board game first. For players who love CLUE but want to expand their collections and develop some new skills, however, CLUE Secrets & Spies makes a great addition to any playroom and offers good play value by being just as fun to play the seventh time as the first.

Chicago families can find the Parker Brothers CLUE Secrets & Spies board game at mass toy retailers like Target and Toys R Us, or online at the Hasbro Toy Shop.

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