Cluedo Pokies
Cluedo is a classic murder-mystery board game that’s been around since 1949, where the aim is to uncover clues that lead to a murderer, with the player who finds the right room, the killer and the weapon, winning the round.
The rights to a Cluedo-based pokie have been obtained by IGT and they have made the most of ownership by releasing a series of games, culminating in the Who Won It? version reviewed here.
Cluedo – Who Won It? has all the action from the original pokie and updates the graphics, symbols and features to bring it right up to date, although it’s still set in an old English manor house and still has the same cast of shifty characters, one of whom has dispatched Dr Black in a most grisly way.
Playing Cluedo – Who Won It?
Playable from just 0.01 to 75.00 per spin, this is a 5-reel game that has symbols over 3 rows and 15 paylines across it. To activate all lines, players will need to wager a minimum of 0.15, although even if just a line or 2 is active they will still qualify for scatter wins, although not entry to the bonus round.
Behind the reels is a picture of the mansion house where the dastardly deed has taken place and although it’s mostly hidden, it still sets the scene up quite effectively.
Anyone who has played the board game will recognise the symbols, with the playing card icons 9, 10, J, Q, K, and A featuring the potential murder weapons like the lead pipe, candlestick, revolver and rope across them. The higher value symbols are made up of the suspects including Professor Plum, Mrs. White, Reverend Green and the seductive Miss Scarlett.
Winning lines are formed by 3, 4 or 5 of the same symbol stopping in an unbroken line, across an active payline running form the left side, although scatter wins occur in any positions.
Cluedo
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Bonus Features
Cluedo – Who Won It? has a couple of bonus symbols that will help players to get more frequent wins and open up the extra features. A newspaper is a wild symbol, cleverly given the headline Wild! splashed across it’s page. This will act as all other symbols, with the exception of the Scatter and Bonus, to help create winning combinations, or extend winning lines of 3 or 4 matching symbols into more valuable lines of 4 or 5.
Landing 5 wilds across a line will also pay out 12,500x the line bet, although unusually, there’s nothing for getting 3 or 4 across a line.
Another slightly unusual feature is the scatter symbol, as unlike in most pokies, it won’t trigger any bonus rounds. But all will be forgiven, because just 1 scatter anywhere on the reels will pay 2x the line bet, while 2, 3, 4 or 5 will be worth 5x, 75x, 500x or 12,500x respectively.
The Bonus symbol is a magnifying glass over the game title and if any 3 or more land on an active payline, this opens up the main feature which plays out on a different screen. There’s a notebook that shows the murder weapons, a file that shows the suspects, and a clipboard covered with images of the different rooms where the murder may have taken place.
A magnifying glass moves over each in turn, revealing a prize amount, which players can either accept, which ends the round, or decline and hope that a better prize is revealed next. The third option will need to be accepted though, and while it’s a risk that it may be a smaller amount, once players have triggered the bonus game they are guaranteed a win of some sort.
The Verdict
IGT have skilfully managed to bring the atmosphere of Cluedo to a pokie game, and while it can’t fully replicate how the board game works, they have made a pretty good job of including many of the elements that make it so popular.
With the lower value symbols all featuring a murder weapon and the higher value ones consisting of the characters, anyone who has played Cluedo will immediately recognise much of what is presented before them.
But even the best-looking pokies wouldn’t keep people engaged for long without some good gameplay and features, so Cluedo – Who Done It? comes complete with some unconventional, although unspectacular, bonuses, notably the one where the magnifying glass uncovers instant wins.
There’s no free spins game however, which many players will miss, but at least the bonus game here guarantees a win, where most free spin bonus rounds don’t.
Fans of the board game should certainly try this pokie out, while anyone who hasn’t played the original game before may wonder what all the fuss is about.