How to host a high end murder mystery event on a mid-range budget.

When it comes to creating any experience you need to be looking at the following factors:

• Welcome
• Atmosphere
• Flow
• Finale

A good event will have all four components correct. Any dip in any of those four main factors will affect the overall experience of the game, but any shortfall between those factors will be largely ignored by participants if you get the main four correct.

So if you’re looking to create a high end feel on a mid-range budget, then it’s really important to focus on the four key points in your event and use your budget spend on those four factors.

Possible Cost Savings

You can do things to help reduce costs with the other elements of party budgeting e.g.

• Ask all the guests to bring a bottle or a plate of food.
• Opt for a downloadable game rather than a printed set to keep costs down and don’t print in colour.
• Ask around friends and family to find decorative additions you can borrow for one night.
• Make the most of your local charity shops for costumes.
• Create props out of cardboard boxes and paints.

But if you get the Welcome, Atmosphere, Flow and Finale correct and you can still create a high end experience without breaking the bank.

Focusing on the Welcome

Make sure the guests are welcomed into the experience well. This could be taking additional time and care over the invites, or over the welcome to the event itself. Hand crafting invites isn’t expensive when compared to the costs of buying plush invites, and we always include some ideas to theme invites in our game packs so you can go to town rather than just sending out the invitations each of our games comes with.

Guests should have the expectation of a fun evening, without the anxiety. This is the reason we don’t provide very detailed costume suggestions but rather hints to the character so they can invent their own character. This avoids the concerns over expense many guests have if they need to find something specific for a character portrayal e.g. having to buy a wig, feather boa, plus fours or a smoking jacket (which are both expensive and hard to find… trust me we’ve tried!)

So focus on both their welcome by way of invitation and spend the extra £1-2 per person at this stage on the invite to increase their anticipation of the event.

After that the welcome will in part feed into the atmosphere (next point) and you welcoming them in person at the door.

Atmosphere

The main things that affect atmosphere – lighting, music, decoration, pace. So focus on those. If you’re drinkers, then alcohol covers a multitude of other problems, so ensure everyone has a welcome drink and access to top ups.

With all our games we provide ideas for theme suggestions that won’t break the bank to help you create the right atmosphere as we know this is important. It can start outside the house, with a simple sign on the door (though I have created a drawbridge with cardboard and a blue sheet before when we hosted a medieval themed game!)

Decoration

Set the table well with decorative extras. Think about the ambiance of the room. Can you swap out pictures, add more drapes, change the room you’re entertaining in to a different room in the house that might work better for the theme? Perhaps you could eat in the garden, or decorate out the garage for a one off experience? Could you obtain cheap backdrops? Perhaps you want to change to softer lighting like candles (though remember people have to read and candlelight isn’t always easy for people to read by.)

Music

Consider music or sound effects, pick something on theme – we provide suggestions with our murder mystery packs so you aren’t trying to come up with these yourself.

Drinks and food service

Consider welcome drinks, what you’re eating, how you’re serving the food… all of this adds to the atmosphere.  You could create little menu cards, theme the courses, add “murdery” touches like a splash of red ketchup or coullis on the side of the plates when you serve something.  You may want to stab a knife through the main course and serve the plates with the knife sticking out!

Host with the most

Make sure YOU are dressed up, and on top form in character, as you lead the way and set the standard everyone else will try to hit.

Inviting the right guests

Pick the right guests and make sure they’re cast in the best role for them to shine. Not everyone enjoys acting a role in a murder mystery (strange I know… but true). So pick the guests you know will go to town and give them really fun outgoing characters to play so they can play to their strengths. That way if you want to invite a few less engaged people – the majority will carry the party for the others so that everyone has a good time.

Flow

It’s really important you understand how the game works and you know what people should be doing at key points in the evening and when you should hear from the inspector.

We supply full instructions – which are always worth reading through, but we also have a free 15 minute tester game which is a great start if you are new to hosting as it covers all the key basics of how one of our dinner party games runs. Playing this means you are familiar with our format, and will know what to do when this is sized up to a bigger group and three rounds. So if you’re new to hosting – do download that and have a test play over coffee with some friends.

Flow and pace is your job as host. Don’t be afraid to change the running order of the evening. If the food is ready before people have finished a round, pause the round, and allow people to eat. The games should flex to you, don’t feel constrained by the structure. If you need time between rounds to just chat as friends – then come out of character and chat as friends. If you want to stay in character all night – that’s fine too!

If you feel the pace is dropping, we suggest some games you can play to mix things up a bit. Most people don’t need them or use them, but there’s always a few suggestions in there to give you some ideas of things you could add into the experience.

Not everyone is familiar with murder mystery games, so don’t be afraid to break character to explain what page they’re on or what they need to do at any point. If you have a lot of newbies we find it’s better to have a 5 minute explanation about how it will work at the start, rather than having to nudge someone every 5 minutes throughout.

Our dinner party games are constructed to keep everyone in one room so they “act” to the room at large. We find this helps people make the most of their role and really act out as they have a captive audience. But if you’d prefer a free mixing game, then do reach out as we can adjust the game to have “menus” of questions to allow free mixing. We don’t supply these automatically as we personally don’t like this way of playing. We don’t feel it works well. People are constantly repeating themselves and it takes much longer to play per round. But we CAN make them for you if you want to go down that route. Word of warning… it using menu questions REALLY affects pace, but it can work better for you with a mix and mingle gathering and a large number of people.

Finale

The finale is where it all comes together. And this is why we ensure our games are properly plotted and provide a full denouement including all characters in the solution so people get ruled out one by one *.

Make sure everyone has had a chance to guess at the murderer before moving onto the solution. You may want to create a bit more of an experience by having guests stand up and sit down one by one as they’re eliminated, or have them move from one side of the room to another. Some people have a “shot forfeit” as they are eliminated. Sometimes making the denouement more physical increases the tension in the reveal!

Consider if you are awarding prizes and what they are. (You might make something silly like an egg cup trophy). Also consider whether you want a small gift or gift bag for each person at the end. Everyone loves a goodie bag at a party and providing one will really give your guests a good finish to the evening. This can be as simple as a cupcake with a murder mystery nod as a decorative finish.

In short if you’re trying to get that High-End feel on a low budget then focus on Welcome. Atmosphere, Flow, Finale.

* there is one game that doesn’t do it this way… T’was a death before Christmas… and that’s because it keeps things super flexible for people in the festive season as that’s ALWAYS being adjusted to totally skewed guest genders and numbers.