Museum Suspects Review

Y’all ever play Clue/Cluedo? What about Guess Who? Well combine those and you’ve got yourself a really crappy version of Museum Suspects. So not exactly a direct mashup, but Museum Suspects has very familiar feelings and mechanics to those mentioned above. However, Museum Suspects takes the best parts of those other games and combines them into something that feels familiar, but also offers a modern and fresh take.

Museum Suspects is a unique betting and bluffing deduction game for two to four players. In it a robbery has just taken place in the museum and after the police have secured the perimeter, 16 suspects have been cornered into a room within the museum. It is the players’ jobs to suss out who the suspect(s) may be, or to discern that the suspect has left the museum before its closure. Oh, and the suspects are all anthropomorphic animals. Of course.

DISCLAIMER: We were provided a copy of this game for the purposes of this review. This is a retail copy of the game, so what you see in these photos is exactly what would be received in your box. I do not intend to cover every single rule included in the rulebook, but will describe the overall game flow and major rule set so that our readers may get a sense of how the game plays. For more in depth rules, you may purchase a copy online or from your FLGS. -T

To setup, the Emergency Exit tile is placed on the table while the other 24 Suspect tiles are shuffled and placed into a 4×4 grid; the remaining eight tiles are discarded to the box face-down. Each of these tile feature artwork of an animal and several distinguishing features. On the east and west sides of the grid will be placed one Clue card that exonerates certain features found on the Suspect cards. Each player chooses a color and takes all components of that color along with a notepad and pencil. Once the table is set, the investigation may begin!

Each turn the active player will complete two phases: Investigate a Clue and Suggest a Suspect. They will place one of their colored Investigation Tokens face-up on a Clue card after viewing its art. The art depicted notates either a feature of the character on the Suspect tiles or a specific area within the 4×4 grid of Suspect tiles. Whichever is pictured on the card notes Suspects that are INNOCENT. For example, the card could show a trucker hat. All Suspects wearing trucker hats are now absolutely innocent and can be marked off the player’s notepad. Perhaps the card highlights all Suspects in the top row of the grid. Similarly, the player then marks off all Suspects in that top row from their notepad. These animals are innocent.

After Investigating a Clue, the active player now must Suggest a Suspect by placing another Investigation Token on one of the Suspects in the grid (or the Emergency Exit itself), but this time face-down so other players cannot determine its value.

The next player may now Investigate a Clue by placing their face-up Investigation Token on one of the Clue cards. The caveat, however, is that if they wish to view a Clue that already has a token on it, the active player must now place a token or tokens on the card of higher value than what is showing currently. This causes real anxiety as there are eight Clue cards placed at setup, but the game only lasts six rounds, so no one player will ever have ALL of the information.

Play continues in this fashion until the end of the sixth round, where all players will be out of Investigation Tokens. The Clue cards are revealed one by one, with each innocent Suspect tile being flipped face-down if they match any portion of a Clue card on the table. Whichever Suspect(s) is/are left are the real culprits and points are then tallied according to the values of Investigation Tokens placed per player. If no Suspects remain after revealing all Clue cards, then the real robber has fled and the Emergency Exit tile is scored. The player with the most points at the end will be promoted to Chief and will be in charge of providing donuts for the next game night. Well, okay, the last bit is merely a thematic suggestion.

Components. This game has tiles, tokens, cards, notepads, and pencils (OH MY!) and they are all of fabulous quality. This is what I have come to expect of all Blue Orange Games, and they deliver here. The cards are easy to read and their iconography makes sense. The silly art on the Suspect tiles is fun, and the notepads add to the thematic aesthetic quite well. I really have no complaints about components at all.

In my introduction I compared this to a mashup of Clue and Guess Who?. I feel Clue as I am uncovering more and more clues and marking off possible suspects in my notepad. This brings back all those memories for me. I feel Guess Who? mostly when I am eliminating Suspects by their unique features, be it headwear, background type, animal species, or other items. What is left simply has to be the right one, right? Perhaps.

The twist here is that NONE of the Suspects might be the real villain. That no good, dirty thief may have skedaddled themselves right out the door before all this mess took place. It is so simple, but such a great little surprise when that actually happens in game. It’s so fun to puzzle out who the real culprit is, but it may all be in vain once all is said and done. Great addition, Mr. Walker-Harding!

Now, on the box cover is a red icon that states, “Investigate, Bluff, and Bet!” Two out of three ain’t bad here, but I just disagree with the Bluffing part. Since all players are given 12 Investigation Tokens during setup, and the game lasts exactly six rounds with players placing at least two tokens per round, I do not see how it is even possible to bluff other players. These tokens are precious resources that not only foil opponents on the Clue card values, but also count toward final victory points when placed on the correct Suspects. I have never found myself in a position to just nonchalantly place a bluff token on a tile just to confuse my opponents. So Bluffing is out for me.

However, everything else about this game is quite enjoyable. If you are feeling somewhat nostalgic for an experience similar to either Clue or Guess Who? but want a more modern experience, then I can certainly recommend playing Museum Suspects. In fact, Purple Phoenix Games gives this one a sneaky little 8 / 12. Though this is a great score from us, we have rated other games with the exact same numeric value that simply are not as good as Museum Suspects. So please consider this an 8+ out of 12 instead. For me, I cannot award it a 5 on our scale at this point, but I reserve the right to be rating-fluid once I play it more, and hopefully can introduce it to my little 6 year-old boy (even though it says 8+ on the box – SHHHHHH). Changing up the player dynamic always gives an entirely different experience, and I can see my rating increasing, but definitely not decreasing. This one will be in my collection for a very very long time.