Murdle Review

‘Murdle: A Board Game’ is a spin-off from the incredibly successful puzzle books by G. T. Karber. It feels like a modern version of Cluedo, but with a logic puzzle twist. As someone who has enjoyed logic puzzles since childhood and grew up playing Cluedo (my Dad’s favourite board game), this spoke to me on many levels, and I’m pleased to say it didn’t disappoint.

What’s the story?

‘Murdle: A Board Game’ is a logic puzzle murder mystery, using the people, places and items familiar to regular Murdlers. Don’t worry if you’ve not completed the book puzzles though, there’s no pre-learning needed for the game. If you’re not familiar with logic puzzles and how they work, you basically follow clues to put ticks and crosses in boxes, until you reach a conclusion. (For example, if Major Red is in New Aegis that gets a tick, but he can’t be in the other locations, so they get crosses. Also, this means the other characters can’t be in New Aegis, so you can put a cross in all of those boxes as well.) If you are a logic puzzle newbie, the game itself suggests playing an open teamwork style game to start with, so you get used to how the game mechanics work.

What’s in the box?

Inside the box is a well-made game, with everything you need to pick up and play (apart from a pen or pencil). The board itself is a fold-out logic grid, with the fourth quarter numbered for the evidence folders. This is the big difference to traditional murder mystery games like Cluedo; players don’t have cards, they are in folders you can look at, and there isn’t one envelope with the final answer in, one of the folders will have a guilty card in (but I’ll explain more about this shortly). There are tick and cross counters to place on the board as you build your evidence, as well as small cards with the character names, place names and weapons on, which you can place around the board to help you remember who or what each picture represents. The evidence cards themselves are colour-coded with tabs on top, so they’re easy to pull out individually during the game. There are cards in a separate deck, but these link to your available actions during the game, not the evidence itself (again, I’ll explain more later). There’s also the player notepad, which is a logic puzzle grid with additional boxes for notes when you look in the folders. This is well designed and an essential tool to play the game. The one small snag is there is only one pad for a 2-4 player game, so you will need to rip sheets off for everyone (not a major issue, but a small irritation for me). My favourite element, however, is the genius card shields for each player to place around their notepad sheets. These simple additions keep your game secret (without having to do the school arm around your work thing) and they have reminders of what actions you can take written inside, so you don’t have to constantly refer to the rule book. They’re only a small part of the game, but I love them!