50 Clues First Impressions (Spoiler Free)

In 50 Clues, you’re trapped and in trouble.

Can you escape? (With a good score of course)

50 Clues is an immersive puzzle game that offers the experience of an escape room, but in a format that can be played at home. You combine objects, solve puzzles and decipher codes to complete the story. A smartphone or tablet keeps track of the solutions and provides multistep hints if the need arises.

50 Clues Game Play

Inside the box, you will find two things.

One is a sealed deck of cards you open and flip over one at a time as instructed giving you the rules of the game. The second is a code inside the box lid. Each game uses an app and each copy of the game can be activated 30 times each, but no components are destroyed.

So what are the rules of the game and how do I show them to you without showing you the cards? Well, it’s easy. On the artwork, important ‘things’ are numbered in 3 different styles.

White numbers are quite hidden and allow you to search the deck of cards for that number, then you flip it face up. These are usually items or things to take a closer look at.

Black Numbers are entered into the app for further information. These are things for you to look at, usually locations to move to.

Red numbers are combined… For example, if a Door is number 111 on one card and a key is number 222 on another, put 111 222 into the app and you’ll be given a result.

You follow the story through the deck and complete puzzles. At the end of the game, you get a percentage score depending on how often you enter incorrect codes or ask the app for a hint.

Theme

Dark. It says, “WARNING! Contains graphic violence. Unsuitable for children” on the back of the box.

It does seem the theme is deliberately dark and contains things they think will make people say, “Oh dear”. Witchcraft, Cults and things, you know the stuff.

But, it’s not ‘Bad’. There are just a couple of seemingly deliberate shocking things that didn’t need to be there really.

Setup & Rulebook

Flip over cards and follow the instructions, it’s simple. They also have one card that has ALL the rules on it, which is handy.

You can keep it out for references. Although you’ll soon toss it aside, there’s not much to remember!

Components & Artwork

The cards are OK. The art style is quite nice in a weird greyscale kind of way.

The app is good at doing its job and sometimes adds flavour to incorrect choices by explaining what happened. I say sometimes but it happened in the demo, but not so much in the full game I think.

Also, when inputting 2 numbers it always overwrites them. A minor annoyance but it’s painful, especially if using a phone.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

As you can imagine there is very little to teach and it is an easy game to get new players into. No timer means no pressure to move the game forward quicker than you want to.

50 Clues Summary

This is good fun. Obviously, it’s VERY similar to Unlock. The apps work in a similar way but 50 Clues has a much simpler-looking app. But, it is browser-based for those worried that support for the game will drop.

The puzzles themselves are fun and are both logical and mathematical with a few physical thrown in, a good mixture.

Let’s take a look at each game.

50 Clues: The Home Temple Review (Spoiler-free)

Just a little free tutorial game that I picked up at Essen and played in the hotel. It was only a few cards long and was like the tutorial deck you get in the Unlock games. Enough to show you how the game plays.

This was a good fun story with a few puzzles to make you think. It got me excited for the full games.

50 Clues: The Pendulum of the Dead Review (Spoiler-free)

This was the first full game and I had fun playing it. The story was creepy yet enthralling with a clear goal to achieve.

One issue is something in there that will upset quite a number of people. Having time to think about it, it served NO PURPOSE to the story from what I can tell. It’s just there to shock sadly…

Unfortunately, I can’t say what it is while keeping this spoiler-free so if you want to know just drop me an email.

50 Clues: White Sleep Review (Spoiler-free)

This was a decent story that follows immediately from The Pendulum of the Dead. I didn’t think the puzzles were as fun, but they seemed to be harder.

There was a random act of violence that again, wasn’t required and could have been missed. I didn’t mind this one personally (although it was random and didn’t make sense) but when I mention this game to people that know it they moan about it…

But it was an enjoyable 90+ minutes of gameplay.

50 Clues: The Fate of Leopold Review (Spoiler-free)

A few issues here.

The 1st is there was VERY small text on some of the cards, especially one of them. The 2nd is that the puzzles were weird, very abstract and at one point was just ‘spot the difference’.

The 3rd is the app… For some reason, the hints didn’t push the game forward. It got stuck in a loop where It just kept asking me to input the same code, which I had done already.

The game also referenced cards that I didn’t have but should have had by now. Nothing told me to get them either…

Overall it’s a good fun game system with tricky puzzles that could use a little development work that would be possible with a larger publisher. But for a small outfit, this is a very well-done game.

Jesta ThaRogue