Room for Murder Daily › Blog › Games Like Clue: 12 Murder Mystery Games to Play Instead
Games Like Clue: 12 Murder Mystery Games to Play Instead
Love Clue? Twelve murder mystery games in the same spirit: deduction board games, printable party games and case files, puzzle books, and free daily whodunits you can play online tonight.
- Free tonight: Room for Murder Daily (a floor-plan whodunit) and Murdle (a daily deduction grid), both in the browser.
- Clue for grown-ups: Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective or Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game.
- Bigger groups: a printable murder mystery party game, where every guest plays a suspect.
- Two players: a printable case file or MicroMacro: Crime City.
Clue is a perfect little machine: a body, a mansion, six suspects and the joy of saying "Colonel Mustard, in the library, with the candlestick" before anyone else does. But after the hundredth game you know the board by heart. Here are twelve games that scratch the same itch — deduction, accusation, a culprit to unmask — sorted by what you want from your evening.
Quick picks
| If you want… | Play | Players | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Something free, right now | Room for Murder Daily | 1+ | 10–20 min |
| A daily deduction grid | Murdle | 1+ | 5–15 min |
| Clue for grown-ups | Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective | 1–8 | about 90 min |
| A deep, modern case | Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game | 1–5 | 2–3 hours |
| Everyone plays a suspect | A murder mystery party game | 4–22 | 2–3 hours |
| A date-night puzzle | A printable case file | 1–4 | 2–3 hours |
| Bluffing and lying | Deception: Murder in Hong Kong | 4–12 | about 20 min |
Free whodunits you can play online tonight
1. Room for Murder Daily
Our own: a free murder mystery logic puzzle with a new case every day. You get a top-down floor plan, a handful of suspects and one statement from each — "She was beside the piano", "He was alone with Ada". Place everyone, one person per row and per column, and the killer is whoever was alone in a room with the victim. Gentle on Mondays, devious on Sundays (when the killer lies), with hints, streaks and a leaderboard. Every past case is also a free printable PDF.
Room for Murder Daily
A new floor-plan murder mystery every morning: place the suspects, find who was alone with the victim. No sign-up, works on phones.
Play today's case2. Murdle
G. T. Karber's daily deduction puzzles: a grid of suspects, weapons and locations and a short list of clues. It's the closest thing to the "who, with what, where" of Clue, distilled into five minutes. We compared it with similar games in games like Murdle.
Board games for a Clue night
3. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective
Less a board game than a box of cases: you read the story, choose which addresses in Victorian London to visit, and try to solve the crime in fewer visits than Holmes. Cooperative, story-heavy and wonderful with two to four people. The closest thing to being the detective rather than just guessing the cards.
4. Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game
A modern police procedural for patient groups: each case takes an evening, mixes cards with an online database of files, and asks you to write up your conclusions like a real investigator. For people who found Clue too simple.
5. Chronicles of Crime
An app-assisted mystery: you scan cards and locations with a phone, question suspects and search crime scenes in a 360° view. A good bridge between board games and video games.
6. MicroMacro: Crime City
A huge black-and-white map of a city full of tiny people; each case asks you to follow a story across the map and find what happened. Brilliant for two players or a family around the kitchen table, and it won the German Game of the Year (Spiel des Jahres) in 2021.
7. Mysterium
A cooperative ghost story: one player is the ghost and can only communicate through illustrated dream cards, while everyone else tries to work out the killer, the place and the weapon. Clue's three questions, answered through art and intuition instead of deduction.
8. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong
Social deduction for bigger groups: one player is secretly the murderer, one is a forensic scientist who knows the truth but can only give hints, and everyone else argues. Fast, loud and perfect when the group is too big for Clue.
Printable murder mystery games
9. A murder mystery party game
Clue is a game about six suspects; a murder mystery party lets your guests be the suspects. Everyone gets a character booklet with secrets and lies, the rounds reveal clues, and at the end everyone accuses someone. Print it at home, host it at dinner, and you can play too.
Murder at the Gilded Lily
Chicago, 1926: the reopening night of a gold-leaf speakeasy. Made for intimate dinner parties; the host can play too.
4–8 players (14 with the expansion)
See it on Etsy
Murder at the Monster Matinee
Halloween 1957: a B-movie premiere where the monsters are fake and the murder is real. Costume ideas for every role, no gore.
4–14 players (22 with the expansion)
See it on Etsy10. A printable case file
One big logic puzzle for one to four solvers: hundreds of records (coats in a cloakroom, riders on a ghost train, houses on a street map) and a dozen witness clues that cross them out until one killer is left. A great date-night alternative to a board game.
The Cloakroom Killer
Christmas Eve 1929: 800 coats, 12 clues and one killer. A logic-elimination puzzle for a cosy evening.
1–4 solvers
See it on Etsy11. A murder mystery advent calendar
A clue a day from 1 to 24 December, and the killer unmasked on Christmas Eve — Clue in slow motion. Read how a murder mystery advent calendar works.
The Parcel Post Poisoner
Christmas 1952 at a Vermont post office: open one door a day — a new clue every morning — and unmask the poisoner on Christmas Eve.
1–4 solvers, 1–24 December
See it on EtsyPuzzle books
12. Murder sudoku books
A murder sudoku puts the suspects on a floor plan: one per row and column, and the room tells you the killer. If you like the daily case, the Room for Murder books have 260 more, from cosy cottages to a snowed-in mountain town.
Room for Murder
80 floor-plan murder mysteries in five chapters, from cosy cottages to a lying-killer finale — the book behind this site.
Solo or together
See it on EtsyHow to choose
- How many people? Two: a case file, MicroMacro or a Sherlock Holmes case. Four to six: almost anything. Eight or more: a party game or Deception.
- How long? Ten minutes: the daily puzzles. An evening: a party game, a case file or Detective.
- Competitive or cooperative? Clue is competitive; most modern detective games are cooperative. A party game is both — everyone wins if the killer is caught, except the killer.
- Do you want to be a suspect? Then nothing beats a murder mystery party.
Questions people ask
What is the best game like Clue?
It depends on what you love about Clue. For the deduction, try Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective or a daily logic puzzle like Room for Murder. For the social bluffing, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong. For a party where everyone plays a suspect, a printable murder mystery game.
Is there a free game like Clue online?
Yes. Room for Murder Daily is a free murder mystery logic puzzle with a new case every day: place the suspects on a floor plan using their statements and find who was alone with the victim. Murdle publishes free daily deduction puzzles too.
What's a good Clue-like game for two players?
A printable case file (one big elimination puzzle you solve together), MicroMacro: Crime City, or Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, which works well with two. The daily Room for Murder case is quick to solve as a pair over coffee.
What's a Clue-like game for a big group?
A murder mystery party game, where each guest gets a character with secrets, scales to 14 or even 22 players with an expansion. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong handles up to 12 in under half an hour.
Keep reading
- Knights and Knaves Puzzles with Answers — and the Murder Mystery Version
- 25 Murder Mystery Riddles with Answers (Short Whodunits for Adults)
- The 10-Minute Habit — Why a Daily Logic Puzzle Is Worth Keeping (and How to Keep Your Streak)
We make the games mentioned in this guide — that's why we know them well. Links to Etsy go to our own shop, Midnight Motive.
Clue and Cluedo are trademarks of Hasbro. Murdle and the other game names belong to their owners. We are not affiliated with them; the names are used only to describe and compare the games.