ClueClock Now Runs a Live Game Show in Castle Pines

Update, Oct. 9, 2026: ClueClock has permanently closed. Owners Chris and Joanna Walters announced the closure on Instagram: "With heavy hearts, we're sharing that we have closed our doors." The rest of this story is left as it was written, for the record.

If you're looking for something to do in Douglas County that isn't dinner and a movie, there's a new one: Castle Pines has a live game show.

ClueClock opened it on June 18. Same building as their escape rooms, but its own room, its own stage, a host with a microphone, and you're the contestant. Four games, one hour, 8 to 30 players, $35 each.

Eleven of us went on a Wednesday night to see what it is.

What it actually is

It's a proper room with a stage — dark walls, a lit floor, a scoreboard up in the corner, a floor-to-ceiling prize wheel, a Plinko board, a buzzer podium that glows red and blue, and a retro TV frame built into the wall.

Your group splits into two teams and you play all four games in one hour. You don't pick one. That surprised me — I figured you booked a game. You book the show.

Spin To Win is the wheel. You spin, you buy letters, you try to solve the puzzle before your money's gone. There's a DUEL wedge on it that matters later.

Name That Price is matching prices to products, and it's where the tone of the place shows up. The prizes sit on a shelf under handwritten price cards — a tub of Red Vines, a box of Blistex, a coffee mug. It isn't trying to be Vegas. It's trying to be funny, and it is.

Friendly Feud is survey answers, strikes and steals, played on a buzzer podium with the board lit up behind you. This is the loud one.

Jackpot Falls is Plinko, and it closes the show. You drop a puck from the top and it clatters down through the pegs while everybody yells at a piece of plastic. It's worth enough points to flip the whole game, which is the point of putting it last.

Our night

We ate first at Pines Bar and Grill, then drove over to the next parking lot for the eight o'clock show. Six against five, red versus blue.

We started hot and then fell apart in the middle. Friendly Feud is where it happened — we got a pile of answers on the board, took three strikes, and handed the other team a steal on a question we should've had. Name That Price was worse. They went four for six. We went two for six. On the retry they dropped to two and we stayed at two, which felt less like a comeback than like everybody agreeing to be bad at it together.

Then the wheel landed on DUEL, which pulls one person off each team to settle it by rolling a giant foam die. I drew that one. I rolled a four, the guy across from me rolled a six, and that put them ahead with one game left.

The one game left was Plinko, and it ended on one more duel — another dice roll. That one went our way, and we came from behind to take it.

It runs the full hour, and because Plinko is last, it stays close the whole way. Nobody in our group checked their phone.

The people running it

Two of them work a show. Joanna Walters, who owns the place with her husband Chris, sits at a control desk in the back running the scoreboard and the letters. Out front there's a host in a suit who works the floor and keeps the pace up for the full hour.

He was good. Genuinely funny, a real voice, never lost the room. He also does close-up magic, and after the show he ran a short set that ended with somebody reading the serial number off a dollar bill out of their own wallet — and it matched a number he'd written down before we started. That also got a big reaction.

Who this is for

The 8-player minimum is the whole story. Under eight, book an escape room. At eight or more, this is the better night out, and there isn't much else in Douglas County doing it.

It works as a team-building booking, a birthday, a bachelorette party, a sports team, a big family that's run out of things to do together. It doesn't work as a quiet date night. If your group won't yell, it isn't your thing.

Two things worth asking about when you book, because neither one is on their website. You can request personalized answers — they'll write survey answers around your group, which is the difference between a generic show and one where the board knows who you are. And they swap the answers out every month, so if you liked it, going back later isn't the same show.

There's also a fundraising program they barely advertise: $5 per player donated back to a school, church, sports team, PTO, scout troop or nonprofit. No selling, no order forms, no inventory. They'll build your group a custom code and run it as a fundraiser for a weekend or a whole month. Group rates start at eight players.

The escape rooms, since that's what they're known for

Four of them: Denver Bank Heist, 10 Days In A Mad House (you can start blindfolded and in a straitjacket, optional), Blood Money, and Alien Escape. Sixty minutes, $39 a player and $35 for Alien Escape, two-player minimum, up to seven (six in Alien). Every room's private, which is their whole pitch, and all four are wheelchair accessible.

We didn't do a room, so I'm not going to tell you what they're like.

If you go

ClueClock, 7437 Village Square Dr, Suite A115, Castle Pines, CO 80108, next to the Castle Pines library. (720) 645-2927.
Game show: 8 to 30 players, 60 minutes, $35 a player, private room. Book at clueclockgameshow.com.
Escape rooms: 2 to 7 players, 60 minutes, $39 a player ($35 for Alien Escape). Book at clueclock.com. Arrive 15 minutes early.
Full details, hours, photos and map: ClueClock Escape on the DougCo Directory.

Make it a two-stop night while you're over there. Castello Italiano — the new Italian place from the Farro family — and Duke's Steakhouse are both in the same center, so with those two you can eat and walk over. Pines Bar and Grill is the one that needs the car.