What are the main differences between our murder mystery games and some of the others in the internet?

This is a great question and one we’re often asked.  It’s important to recognise that not every company makes games in the same way and because of that, you aren’t really comparing apples to apples.  Quite often while all games are called muder mystery games – they don’t run in the same way.  The only similarity between them is that someone is dead, and the guests are trying to work out whodunnit.  Which means in much the same way as you eat apples and honey glazed ham – they’re both food but you can’t really compare them to each other in any meaningful way.

I’ll say right off the bat, there are so many other companies in the marketplace we haven’t played them all, so what I’ll do is explain some of the key differences between murder mystery game formats within one specific “type” – in this case “Dinner party games”.  If you want to know what other types of games are out there – check out this blog post.

Key differences between murder mystery games in the “Dinner party game format”

1) The murderer is pre-selected or randomly chosen.

With our murder mystery games – we pre-select the murderer.  This means we write our murder mystery games so the clues all point towards one person being the culprit.  We can feed information into the game through the evidence provided by the inspector, and through information provided by different suspects.  All of which taken together makes the games possible and satisfying to solve as well as play.

With other murder mystery games on the market – the murderer is selected at random on the evening.  The two major pros to this second style of format is that it creates a certain “replayability” as the murderer could be someone different next time.  And secondly, regardless of how many people fail to show up on the night – you can still play as the murderer has to be someone present.  (A massive bonus if you have a very flakey set of guests!!)

On the other hand, the biggest downside to the “chose the murderer on the night” reported by customers is that this format isn’t as satisifying when you reach the solution as literally anyone could have done it, the suspects don’t have any interaction or linked plots (as no one knows if they’ll be there) and the evidence doesn’t lead to one particular suspect.

2) The victim is one of the guests or is already dead.

Believe it or not – I’ve been assured that somewhere out there – there’s a company that sells games where the victim is one of the guests at the party and they “die” in round one.  I fail to see how this can be enjoyable by anyone… but perhaps there are people who like playing corpses?!

With our games – the victim is already dead, and isn’t one of those present.  This means everyone is very much alive and interacting all night.  However we have written games for customers now and again where the host wants to be the victim so they are free to handle the catering, and think a dead body at the start will be fun.  So it’s possible to do, and some of our games, you can play act the discovery of the body before you start the night, and in this instance, you can ask someone to play a corpse briefly OR use a mannequin or a clothes stuffed with tights and paper to make a dead body shape.

3) The murderer is TOLD they’re the murderer during the game.

I’ve done a whole blog post on the pros and cons of this already – see here

4) Menu cards of questions so everyone works alone, or shared interrogation rounds.

There are two distinct ways of playing out murder mystery games.  Option 1: Focus on questioning: you can give everyone ALL the possible questions required each round and allow them to freely mix and speak to the other suspects in their own time.  Option 2: Focus on Listening: Everyone has a couple of questions each round, and you listen to everyone else questioning and answering to get the full picture.

To be honest – both work.  Our preference and the way we decided to write our games is using option 2… but we can amend our games to menu card formats if required and often do adjust to order as needed.

Pros to menu cards:

It allows mix and mingle, and works better for buffets.

Cons to menu cards:

You’re constantly repeating yourself answering the same question to everyone at different times!  And sometimes you don’t get to see everyone or hear all the clues.

Because of the repeating – each round takes twice as long.

Pros to listening:

You get to listen in on the conversations and people tend to “act out” better with an audience, especially if they aren’t repeating themselves.  You get to see their “very best self” and laugh at each other and with each other.  You hear all the clues.  The game remains “pacey”.

Cons to listening:

You all have to be in the same room at the same time.  There’s more structure which doesn’t suit every type of party.

5) host plays host / host plays suspect

With some murder mystery games you need a host role as they don’t come with a video or MP3 inspectors as standard.  We always wanted hosts to enjoy playing our games, so we provide an inspector as an optional role.  This means you can ALL play suspects and use the MP3/Video inspector.  BUT we always provide the script as standard along with these – so if you want a host in a host role, or need an extra guest for an odd numbered party, you can use that inspector role in it’s script form.

Our games were upgraded in 2021 to ensure they all had inspector Videos as well as MP3s.  You can find all our inspector videos for the murder mysteries on our website here:

https://murderpartygames.co.uk

We’ve had super feedback from everyone who loves this option since we made the change, so I think it really adds something to the parties.

6) Game content is understood before purchase.

The reason we set up Red Herring Games in the first place was because the content in each murder mystery game we had played previously wasn’t appropriate for our Church youth group.  The kids had seen us play at home, but had I used an “off the shelf” kit available at the time, the content was far too steamy or controversial for the parents to have been comfortable with their young teens taking part.

As a result I wrote a game for the kids, and played it with the adults first to check.  This started off the entire concept for Red Herring Games and you could say things have rather got out of hand from that point on.  However we’ve never lost sight of the fact that for some audiences it really helps to know the likely content in a game to avoid upsetting people.  This could be because of young ears or cultural sensitivies, or because a trauma has happened recently in the friendship group you’re playing with.  As a result you’ll find content ratings for our games on their listings.  This tells you roughtly what to expect without knowing the plot.  We try to do this to help people who are triggered by certain subjects too – which is why it’s always worth reading the content ratings.

To help things along we’ve rated games by TEEN or MATURE – teen games being less saucy and more in the PG12 category.  The MATURE games are those which would be in the 12+ film section.  Usually still nothing more sordid than the average James Bond film, but because you’re playing the character who is having the affair / pregnant / dealing in drugs, it’s asking friends to “be” these characters, so it’s best to know!  The last thing you want to do is cast your bible belt righteous granny is a transvestite drug dealer, or your 9 year old niece as a flirtatious drug addled prostitute who’s “up the duff”.

It’s impossible to cover every base – content ratings would be too long, and give away too much detail – but this is why we run a customer service team.  If you want to be 100% sure the game you’re having won’t cause offence or trigger someone – just get in touch to ask.  We don’t mind.  We’d rather you got the right game for you.

7) boxed set or download

These days most on-line companies offer both options.  Though there are some firms who only offer one versoin.  Boxed sets are often found consumer retail shops who access the mass produced games and those are generally only available in printed format.  Downloadable only games generally come from companies with no offices and printing equipment.

Companies who supply both, will generally be able to help you if a booklet goes missing for any reason.  (This most often happens near Christmas when people send booklets to friends only to find they don’t arrive!).  But for those who mass produce their hard copy versions, often they can’t replace single items, or provide replacements in the same format as the boxed versions.

We print in-house – which means the games you download and the games you buy in boxes are identical. It also means we can reprint and replace missing items easily.  And we can print custom versions of the games and create these all the way through the process.

8) optional characters

Some companies create games with optional characters built into the game.  This means their games work for 8-10 guests for instance.  Guest 9 and 10 will not be cross referenced within the 8 player version or if they are there will be a statement like “If so and so is here, ask them this question”.

Other companies create “flexi” games for 6-20 players – as the murderer is selected on the night and it doesn’t matter who is there as the menu cards detail questions for all 20 but you just don’t read out the ones for guests who aren’t present.

We don’t create games with optional characters, because if you are playing a suspect, you want to know you could potentially BE a suspect, rather than being ruled out immediately by the virtual of knowing you’re “optional” which is usually very apparent the moment game play starts.

We don’t create flexi games either – as we feel games should have a solution so that it’s possible to “win” when playing.

Instead of creating optional characters, we provide the option of sizing up or down the party post-purchase.  If you think your numbers are flexing – the best solution is therefore the download/virtual kits.  BUT if you want to go ahead with a printed set – we can help set up the game to create optional guests that are more included and don’t necessarily feel “optional” once we’ve had a chat with you to get the right experience that you want.

We also offer the option to access the invitations early, give you time to firm up the guest list, then order the right size kit.