Awkward Guests - The Mr Walton Case

Cluedo assumed everyone at the table was telling the truth. This one knows better.

Mr Walton is dead in his own mansion and the household is full of people with reasons. You need four answers — who, how, why, and whether anyone helped — and you get at them by interrogating suspects, leaning on the staff, walking the crime scene and reading the police reports. What makes it work is the Brilliant Deck System: the box holds thirty cases, and a free companion app generates up to a thousand more, each one reachable through a different spread of cards. You will not play the same game twice.

The real mechanism is trade. Information lives on cards you hold, and the only way to get what you need is to give something away — so every round is a negotiation where you are trying to hand over the clue that helps you most and them least. It has been fairly described as Catan's trading grafted onto a murder, and the comparison holds. Forty-five minutes at a tight table, well past an hour at eight, and it takes a full game before anyone trades well.

Perfect for: The one in your group who works out the twist twenty minutes in and cannot keep their face still about it.

1–8 players | 45–75 minutes