Review: Clue Carré - The Game Museum

RATING: 4 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: 1:12

If you are seeking a nostalgia overload, you have come to the right place. Hopefully this tour doesn’t end with Game Over.

Story

Welcome to the Evolution of Games exhibit at the Clue Carré Museum of Games. As humanity has evolved over the centuries, so has our ability to fulfill possibly our most primal need: to play games. From thousand-year old games like Go and Mancala through today’s video and virtual-reality simulations, we have filled our free time with cards, boards, dice, and all manner of monsters to defeat. This time, the monsters are the games themselves. Can you play through the millennia of game history in under an hour, or will you be left staring at the two most dreaded words in history: GAME OVER?

Archaeologists have found dice from 6,000 BC, so it would seem apparent that it is in our DNA to play games. As technology has evolved, games have been able to become more complex and engaging than ever before. What better way would there be to celebrate games than inside of an escape room? After all, it is one of the newest forms of gaming.

The Game Museum does not contain a complicated story nor fancy set design. However, there are an abundance of fresh and interesting puzzles that celebrate the games we’ve grown to love. Be prepared as you take a nostalgic journey from dice to virtual reality in one fun-filled experience.

Scenic

The walls are rather plain with with an orange stripe around the perimeter. However, in museum fashion, there are displays lining the walls with little square plaques describing what we are viewing – all organized in chronological order.

There is a dice game from Mesopotamia (circa 6,000 B.C) followed by board games such as Monopoly, Scrabble, and Clue. In the center of the room, there’s a large wooden table with an inlaid chess board. One wall has a Go-Fish inspired game with colored wooden fish. Beneath it there are a few locked cabinets – care to play rock, paper, scissors to find out what’s inside? There are two locked doors – one leading to the “Wizard’s Trial”, while the other leads to the appropriately named “8-Bit & Beyond” exhibit.

While the first room has mostly card and board games, the second area of The Game Museum is the digital “8-Bit” exhibit. The walls are painted with Tron bikes leaving behind their famous light trails, and there’s a few video game posters on the wall. There are three monitors on top of a shelf with a couple locked cabinets below.

Puzzles

The Game Museum’s focus is on its puzzles. Every display on the wall has an activity associated with it. While they were all in chronological order, the puzzles can be solved in a non-linear fashion.

There were a wide variety of puzzles to keep us busy. Whether we were “going fishing”, sinking battleships, or building a hotel on Park Place, every puzzle is intuitive and got us one step closer to… saving the princess? Let’s go with that!

While the first room is void of much technology, the second room introduces us to the “8-Bit & Beyond” exhibit. There is one prop we interacted with that I have never seen used in another escape room, and it was just plain fun – enter the Konami Code to find out what it is! There are also several other fun surprises for retro-game lovers. The Game Museum’s tour is concluded with a satisfying virtual reality puzzle. Overall

The Game Museum takes a chronological look at the most iconic games throughout history. Every display in the museum has an activity associated with it. Whether you are sinking battleships, rolling dice, or playing a round of Scrabble, there are plenty of puzzles to keep everyone engaged.

Clue Carré has creatively integrated a wide variety of activities into The Game Museum by seguing from the low-tech puzzles in the first exhibit to the high-tech tasks in the “8-Bit & Beyond” exhibit. Whether you are a board and card game enthusiast, or if retro-style video games are more your speed, you are sure to have a gratifying experience. Come take a tour of The Game Museum, and hopefully you won’t see the dreaded words: Game Over.