CluedUpp Games - The Constanta Ripper

"Think you have what it takes to catch a serial killer? CluedUpp is an exciting, outdoor detective adventure - and it’s coming to Constanta on Saturday the 23rd October 2021."

I've seen in July the ad for this game on Facebook and was intrigued by it, I visited their website and decided with my husband, Catalin that we wanted to attend. I bought the ticket, about 179 lei/ 36 euro for one team ticket. The team could be 2 to 6 people.

One/ Two weeks before of the game we received an email with some information about the game. The starting point, in Piata Ovidiu and some other details. We downloaded the CluedUpp app and created accounts for the game. I added the voucher number to the game and everything was set.

The day of the game finally arrived. We could have started the game anytime between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. The game ended at 5 p.m. We started at about 10:15. We chose a team name, The Wabits, comes from the Rabbits but with the first letter changed to W because our name is Epuras, iepuras means little rabbit. And we made a selfie of our team. 

We went to the starting location in Ovidiu Square and started the game. The game was a map of Constanta with little squares with question marks or people and question marks in different places around the map. We had to go over to each place and when we entered an area close to it, a pop-up would appear with a short description of the place/ people and a riddle to be answered. We enjoyed answering all the riddles, we knew the answers to most of them but there were a few that escaped our smarts. If you didn't answer correctly to a riddle you incurred a time penalty, sometimes you could try again, sometimes you had a limited number of tries. You could interrogate each person on the map, there were 3 questions available. What we didn't know was that there was a limited number of question you could ask per game, only 30, so we should have been more sparse with questioning the suspects, ask less questions more wisely because we finished the questions pretty fast and we couldn't ask more. 

This is how the map looked like at the beginning of the game.

We walked around old part of Constanta a lot, made some photos too. We made about 15000 steps/ 15 km that day. 

At noon we took a break from the game, because you could pause the game. And we went to lunch in the old port, we ate pizza at On Plonje Restaurant. After that we went to the same place where we paused the game and started the game again. 

This is how part of the map looked like at the end of the game. We had visited all the marks on the map and questioned some of the people there.

After finishing visiting all the marks, we sat on a bench and discussed everything we discovered from the witnesses and suspects, who had alibi, who didn't and what was the weapon used for the killings. (at the start of the game a list of possible suspect weapons was given)  We deliberated and had a verdict. And we were right! We finished the game in 3 hours: 26 minutes. We were on #6 when we finished.

You can see photos with the participant teams on the Facebook Page of the Event. 

If you liked the game description a new game will take place in Constanta in July 9th 2022, see the game website.

As a conclusion we liked the game, it was entertaining but it kept us looking to our phones and not so much at the surroundings. Maybe because we knew all the places the marks were positioned on and because we were in a hurry. Maybe for somebody who doesn't know Constanta and plays the game at a slower pace it's more interesting. It would have helped if the game was translated to include Romanian landmarks in the game, like Hotel Intim instead of Hotel Astor (just an example, Hotel Astor is not in the game). In 2018 we participated to a architectural hunt that was more enticing, that made us look around and search for architectural details and elements. It was a beautiful game. See more photos at the link.

So, anyway, we liked the game, it was good for exercise as we walked a lot, 15 km in a day. We used our brains to crack the riddles and to find the killer. We felt smart at the end of the day, not the winners of any category (fastest team/ best dressed team/ best team picture / best team name / best little detectives), but smart. Thanks to the organizers for a nice experience!

The winners were:

Fastest Team - Cuba Libre

Best Dressed Team - Dark Shadows Team

Best Team Picture - The Black Moustaches

Best Team Name - The Misfits

Best Little Detectives - Patrula Politistilor