Whilst it does change from time to time, I always find myself coming back to Cluedo. I don’t really know why. It’s certainly not the best board game in the world by any means. There’s just something about Cluedo that makes me remember it extremely fondly from my childhood and keep wanting to play it just one more time.
I’ve long since had a love and fascination with murder mystery novels, and can’t get enough of Agatha Christie (Miss Marple, Poirot etc). I’m not sure which one feeds which. Do I love Cluedo because of a crazy murder mystery fascination. Or do I love murder mystery stories because I was introduced to Cluedo as a child and never looked back?
Either way, I’m certainly not alone. On both the Cluedo front and Agatha Christie!
Cluedo (or Clue as it’s curiously known in the USA) is still in production today. Unbelievably it was first made way back in 1949 in the UK by Waddingtons Games. It’s hard to believe the game is really that old.
The other intriguing thing about the game name is that in latin ‘ludo’ means ‘I play’ – so Cluedo is really a play on the words ‘clue’ and ‘I play’. It’s not Greek but there you go 😉
I guess I’m also generally a fan of board games. I love all sorts of them, right from the simplest luck based games like snakes and ladders, through to some of the fairly complex strategy games like Risk, and those produced by Avalon Games with hundreds of counters/pieces to them. Of course I already told you about my secret crush game before, but I guess I’m just a big kid and love games of all types. I love playing computer games too – puzzle games, or even those 3D adventure/shooter type games. Even the odd RPG sometimes. I know, and I’m a girl too.
Thing is, I think games are valuable. Strategy games like chess are widely regarded as valuable teaching tools. They are even considered valuable in military terms. I also think most games are useful in some way – whether they are teaching children how to count, how to deal well with winning and losing. Even improving hand and eye co-ordination is a useful skill which many computer games improve. It’s even been shown they can help with real world skills, people who play racing driving games do learn some race driving skills that work in the real world too!
Never look down on people who play games. They can be a lot of fun, but can also be very social and teach a lot of skills. If you’ve lost the love of gaming (which we all had as kids!) then try playing an old board game – you might just surprise yourself.
