🎶 Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? 🎵 If you just sang that, too, then you’ll want to check out the card game based on the ’90s computer game! Build note-taking skills and familiarity with famous landmarks from around the world all while having fun solving a mystery.
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Cards in Carmen Sandiego
The game is composed of three decks of cards: V.I.L.E. henchmen, loot, and locations. Each player receives two of each kind of card (three if you’re playing a 2-player game). Place them in a grid, face down, without looking at them. One of each card is placed face-down in the center of the table. Extras are placed in decks off to the side. Each player also has a dry-erase folder. Unfortunately, it’s really not big enough for all the required notes, especially if you use the included dry-erase markers.
Each turn, roll the die to determine what kind of card you will be looking at. You have to start with your cards, but once you know what all of your cards of a type are, you can choose anyone else’s cards to look at. Make sure you write down the location of the card accurately so you can refer to it later.
Making an Arrest
When you know the locations of a matching location and loot, as well as the location of one henchman that is not Carmen, you can make an arrest. If you’re correct, these cards will be discarded. If there are more cards in the decks, the player(s) replenish(es) their missing cards, again without looking at them.
At this time, you can also switch (without looking) one of your cards for one of the center cards. The goal is to get a matching location and loot into the center and to know where Carmen is. When you think you have this set up, declare that you have a warrant for Carmen’s arrest. You need to be able to state what the center location and loot cards are and where Carmen is.
Is Carmen Sandiego Worth It?
I love logic puzzles and deduction, but the setup and rules for Carmen Sandiego are a bit too complicated for me. It would be one thing if it were the logic, but it’s just trying to keep track of what you’re supposed to do when, what you can do versus can’t. I think the directions are set up weird and hard to follow. There were times that we thought we could do one thing, only to read later that we were supposed to do something else.
At the end of the day, we have enough other whodunnit-type games that we don’t need to keep Carmen Sandiego. However, if you loved the video game as a kid and you find the card game used, it’s worth the trip down nostalgia lane.