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Genres | Social game, Party game |
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Social deduction game |
A murder mystery game is a type of party game in which players investigate and solve fictitious murders. In many variations, a player secretly plays as a murderer while the others attempt to determine the murderer's identity.
These games typically involve a group of 6 to 20 people.
The murder mystery fiction genre began in the first half of the 19th century. The party game wink murder dates back to the early 20th century and involves one player secretly selected as a murderer, who can "kill" other players by winking at them. A killed player must count to five before "dying", and the murderer tries to avoid detection.
Jury Box, released in 1937, is considered the first murder mystery game. In this game, the players, acting as jurors, are given a murder scenario, evidence presented by the district attorney and defendant, two photographs of the crime scene, and ballot papers. After the players have made their decision as to who is guilty, the real solution is read out. [1]
Cluedo , known as Clue in North America, was released in 1948 and is recognized as the first murder mystery board game[2]. In this game, players race to identify a killer.
The 1980s saw the introduction of role-playing murder mystery games in a "How To Host" boxed format. These early scenarios were generally simpler than modern games, with minimal acting directions and relied on the guests being comfortable ad-libbing responses to each other's questions.
In 1986, Dimitry Davidoff created the party game Mafia , where players sit in a room and a number of secret mafia members conspire to "murder" innocent players during eyes-closed night phases. This led to a genre of social deduction games where players attempt to uncover a secret subgroup.
Modern murder mystery games for dinner parties are often structured so that each guest is equally involved. Murder Mystery Dinner Party Game Kits can take the form of scripted games or interactive games. [2] A player's preference will be driven by how they want their party to progress:
In scripted murder mystery games, the participants are told exactly what to say and when. They are often provided with introductory statements, questions to ask, answers to give, and occasionally some shared dialogue to break the ice. Character information often comes in booklets which are read from throughout the course of the evening, usually around a table in rounds with the sole purpose of solving the murder. These games gained popularity in the 1990s, particularly with the How to Host a Murder series. Scripted games allow no opportunity for ad-libbing; while players may portray their characters, their interactions are confined to the information furnished by the game.
In interactive murder mystery games, participants are provided with character backgrounds and confidential information. Unlike scripted games, these feature multiple subplots, and the goal extends beyond merely solving the murder. Typically, a dinner takes place during the event, but guests are not confined to sitting around a table; they are free to move about and engage with others at will. Participants are encouraged to interrogate, perform actions, or engage in activities with fellow guests, aiding them in solving the case or fulfilling their characters' individual objectives. Interactive games permit ad-libbing, allowing players to develop their characters in original directions. In some versions, the murderer is aware of their role from the outset, while in others, this information is revealed to everyone during the solution round.
The games for 6 to 20+ players usually takes over 2–3 hours and the players use their character booklets and clues (i.e., the game contents) to delve into the background of the murder using the questions, answers, hints, evidence, and clues provided. These are all designed to elicit more and more information about the murder until the players are in a good position to suggest who they believe the guilty party is.
More often than not, hosts invite players to attend the party dressed as, and ready to play the part of, one of the suspects listed in the game scenario. The scripted game is usually played over a three-course dinner party, whereas an interactive game can be played in a mix-and-mingle style format with finger foods, a buffet, or a sit-down dinner.
Interactive games are also used in team-building environments. Companies and church groups have found them to be a good resource for fostering good communication skills and building closer relationships among individuals. Organizers of the mystery can assign roles and characters based on their knowledge of the guests.
Because not everyone can take a role in a large group game, the role of "suspect" is usually given to actors, who learn scripts or ad lib a performance which will gradually reveal who the murderer is to the other guests. The actors are fully "in the know" about all aspects of the case.
The remaining guests will take on the role of detective and it will be their "job" to actively solve the case by examining evidence, finding clues, following and questioning suspects.
Large group events can be run in several ways including:
Large group games are often played in a hired venue, a restaurant, a hotel, or at a workplace. They are often used for fundraisers, team building, and corporate events.
Live versions of murder mystery shows, in which guests attend commercial venues such as hotels as paying viewers, are sometimes classified as dinner theater or mystery dinners, rather than murder mystery games.
However, there are interactive games that were created for large groups of over 200 guests. Typically, these events are hosted like the other format of interactive games, but some characters in the game are expanded into teams to allow for everyone in the group to have a role.
Murder-mystery games known as jubensha (lit. 'scripted murder') became popular in China in the late 2010s, where players meet around a table and read through a script to deduce who among them is the murderer. Some venues offer "immersive jubensha" games where players dress in costume, and venue staff perform the roles of NPCs (non-player characters. [4] ) The games draw inspiration from Western murder mystery evenings. [5]
By early 2022, there were more than 30,000 jubensha venues in China. [6]
Murder mystery games come in several different versions:
Ngaio Marsh’s 1934 murder mystery A Man Lay Dead is set during a murder-mystery party in an English country house in which one of the guest is actually murdered with a dagger. [7]
In the 1973 mystery film The Last of Sheila , characters play a game where they are assigned secret roles, and which leads to a possible murder. The script was based on a murder mystery game its writer Stephen Sondheim had created for friends after college, where he "told each person to think of a way to kill one of the others over the weekend we would be spending together in the country". [8]
The 1985 comedy mystery film Clue is based on the board game of the same name. The movie follows six guests who are invited to a mansion, where they become suspects in a murder investigation. The film was released with multiple endings, offering different solutions to the crime.
The 2022 film Glass Onion opens with a technology billionaire inviting friends and influencers to a remote island to play a murder mystery game.
A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically portray their characters. The players pursue goals within a fictional setting represented by real-world environments while interacting with each other in character. The outcome of player actions may be mediated by game rules or determined by consensus among players. Event arrangers called gamemasters decide the setting and rules to be used and facilitate play.
Cluedo, known as Clue in North America, is a murder mystery game for three to six players that was devised in 1943 by British board game designer Anthony E. Pratt. The game was first manufactured by Waddingtons in the United Kingdom in 1949. Since then, it has been relaunched and updated several times, and it is currently owned and published by the American game and toy company Hasbro.
A whodunit is a complex plot-driven variety of detective fiction in which the puzzle regarding who committed the crime is the main focus. The reader or viewer is provided with the clues to the case, from which the identity of the perpetrator may be deduced before the story provides the revelation itself at its climax. The investigation is usually conducted by an eccentric, amateur, or semi-professional detective.
Clue is a 1998 video game based on the board game of the same name. It is also known as Clue: Murder at Boddy Mansion or Cluedo: Murder at Blackwell Grange, depending on whether the country of release used American or British English.
The Clue series is a book series of 18 children's books published throughout the 1990s based on the board game Clue. The books are compilations of mini-mysteries that the reader must solve involving various crimes committed at the home of Reginald Boddy by six of his closest "friends".
Clue The Musical is a musical with a book by Peter DePietro, music by Galen Blum, Wayne Barker and Vinnie Martucci, and lyrics by Tom Chiodo, based on the board game Clue. The plot concerns a murder at a mansion, occupied by several suspects, that is solved by a detective, while the ending is decided by the audience.
Cluedo DVD Game is a deduction/murder-mystery interactive DVD movie game based on the Cluedo franchise. It was published by Hasbro and Parker Brothers in the US in 2006, and designed by Rob Daviau. Previously, the Cluedo DVD Game had been released in the UK in October 2005, shortly followed by a French edition. It supports 3-5 players, and each case runs about 60 minutes.
Nancy Drew: Legend of the Crystal Skull is the 17th installment in the Nancy Drew point-and-click adventure game series by Her Interactive. It is available for play on Microsoft Windows platforms. It has an ESRB rating of E for moments of mild violence and peril. Players take on the first-person view of fictional amateur sleuth Nancy Drew and must solve the mystery through interrogation of suspects, solving puzzles, and discovering clues. There are two levels of gameplay, Junior and Senior detective modes, each offering a different difficulty level of puzzles and hints, however neither of these changes affect the plot of the game. The game is loosely based on the book The Mardi Gras Mystery (1988).
Sherlock Holmes is a series of adventure games developed by Frogwares. The games are based on Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. John H. Watson. While the franchise is based on Doyle's stories, each game has an original plot and storyline.
The Portopia Serial Murder Case is a 1983 adventure game designed by Yuji Horii and published by Enix. It was first released on the NEC PC-6001 and has since been ported to other personal computers, the Family Computer (Famicom), mobile phone services and most recently, Windows as Square Enix showing off their natural language processing technology.
A mystery dinner is a popular type of dinner theater in which the play is a murder mystery, and the diners are invited to solve the mystery as they eat and watch the play. In many mystery dinners, there is no separate stage from the eating area; instead, the actors are mixed in with the diners — and often improvise dialog with diners — creating a more immersive atmosphere.
Cluedo is an Australian whodunnit game show based on the British series of the same name and inspired by the 1949 board game Cluedo. It was produced by Crawford Action Time in conjunction with Nine Network. The show saw a studio audience view a dramatised scenario, then complete rounds of interrogating the six suspects on stage in character and viewing further evidence through a pre-recorded criminal investigation. Players then deduced the solution to the murder case using a trio of computer-linked electronic dials, and after the solution was revealed the first person who had locked-in this combination won a prize.
Sleuth 101 was an Australian comedy "improvisatory whodunit game show" television series, broadcast on ABC1 in 2010. The series revolves around a murder-mystery that must be solved by a celebrity guest detective. Each episode features a guest detective, four suspects, a crime scene, evidence and witness accounts - just like real detective work. The show is hosted by comedian Cal Wilson, who occasionally gives subtle hints towards the crime. Each week, the guest detective must solve the murder using his or her evidence. There are some similarities to the 1970s British series Whodunnit!, the 1990s Australian television game show Cluedo, and the 2010s British series Armchair Detectives. A second series was originally being negotiated by the ABC, but later cancelled.
Clue Chronicles: Fatal Illusion is a Windows point-and-click adventure game based on the Cluedo franchise, known as Clue in North America. It is a reinterpretation and adaption of the Clue board game as an adventure game including many of the original characters. The game was distributed with a variety of covers, each featuring a different murder weapon.
There have been two distinct mobile adaptations of the Hasbro board game Clue.
Mysterium is a cooperative board game designed by Oleksandr Nevskiy and Oleg Sidorenko. It blends aspects of murder mystery games and card-based guessing games. One person plays the ghost of a murdered individual who can communicate with the other players only through a series of visions in the form of illustrated cards. The other players, who take the role of psychic mediums, must interpret these cards to identify a suspect, location, and murder weapon. Following its release, Mysterium received positive reviews. It has since received two expansions Mysterium: Hidden Signs and Mysterium: Secrets and Lies, which introduces a new card type to identify: the story.
Cluedo, known as Clue in North America, is a murder mystery-themed multimedia franchise started in 1949 with the manufacture of the Cluedo board game. The franchise has since expanded to film, television game shows, book series, computer games, board game spinoffs, a comic, a play, a musical, jigsaws, card games, and other media.
How to Host a Murder: The Watersdown Affair is a murder mystery party game published by Decipher in 1985.
Jubensha, also known as script murder games, or simply script games, are a Chinese genre of live action role-playing (LARP) murder mystery game, similar to what's known as "Parlour LARP". This genre became popular in China in the late 2010s and has been described as a "mix of Cluedo, Werewolf and LARP".