Author Archives: Steve Hatherley

About Steve Hatherley

Steve is one half of Freeform Games and wrote Death on the Gambia, The Roswell Incident, Hollywood Lies (and its seasonal variants Halloween Lies and Christmas Lies). He has edited many, many others. He lives in Yorkshire, England with his wife, daughter and dog.

Way out West party photos

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Laura Breeding recently told us about her Way out West party:

“We have enjoyed sharing murder mystery games with family and friends in the past, but our guests have made comments about having to read all night with box games – and one said maybe we can find a western!

“I went on the hunt for a western and found your Way out West, which allowed us to interact with another to create a production, versus the scripting in other mysteries. This murder took place not only in a western scene but at the silver dollar saloon and we had just added a bar to our home which was a great fit for our rowdy bunch who really immerse themselves in the role they’ve been casted for. There were challenges, moments of passion and excitement, swindling, dealings, an arrest tor two, and even a shootout at high noon! Our bunch had an amazing time on this murder mystery night – I will continue to do our murder mystery hosting through this company!

“I do recommend sending character details ahead of time, if your murder mystery, guests are used to either box murder mysteries, or never played at all.”

Great ideas for costumes and decor here!

Click here to learn more about Way out West.

Way out West is also available in German and in French (as La Ruée vers Cactusville).

Updating Davy Jones’ Locker and Way out West

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Our ongoing project to update our games to our latest format continues with Davy Jones’ Locker and Way out West.

Davy Jones’ Locker

We completed this earlier in the year but forgot to mention it here on our blog.

Davy Jones’ Locker is our shipboard game of pirates in the Caribbean. The Libra is sailing from Tortuga to Florida – but with so many scoundrels aboard, it will be an eventful journey.

Apart from updating it into the new format (and correcting the odd typo), Davy Jones’ Locker hasn’t changed as a result of this update.

Way out West

Way out West is our best-selling game set in the Old West in 1884. The railroad is coming to the sleepy town of Cactus Gulch and brings trouble with it.

While we’ve not changed the plots or characters, we’ve simplified how we present Way out West. Previously, Way out West came in two versions – a version for adults and a version for kids. The kids’ version was the same as the adults’ but with references to elements like saloon girls removed (they’re now waitresses).

We’ve combined the two versions – there’s just a family-friendly version now. It’s the same game with the same plots and characters, but it’s now easier to include younger players as everyone is using the same version.

We have also now folded the expansion pack into the main game – so there’s no need to buy the expansion pack if you have more than 14 guests coming.

Getting updated copies

If you have an older copy of Davy Jones’ Locker or Way out West, you can get the updated versions by using the download instructions you received when you first bought the games.

Way out West photos

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Rachel Foyst recently told us about her Way out West party:

“We played Way out West as a fundraising event for our son’s trip to Europe with other youth at our church. It was a fabulous time! We used all 27 available characters and there were plenty of townsfolk who came as spectators. We were surprised how quickly the characters jumped into action. There was plenty of drama and everyone got into their characters! We followed the recommended timeline in the instructions for planning, which was very helpful. Folks at our church are already talking about which we’ll do next! Thank you for creating such an interactive, fun game.”

The jail got lots of use, as you can see…

Click here to learn more about Way out West.

Way out West is also available in German and in French (as La Ruée vers Cactusville).


Best exam ever!

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Using A Dead Man’s Chest for a Spanish exam.

A few years ago, Melissa Midcap used A Dead Man’s Chest as an exam for her Spanish students. Here’s what she did:

“Hey there!! It was a crazy day running A Dead Man’s Chest as a Spanish exam for both lunch and dinner (48 players total), but it was also a lot of fun. The students had a great time and rose to the challenge of playing the game for three hours with no English. I’m happy to say that everyone received either an A or a B on the final exam! (There was also an essay part to the exam, during which students had to write about the evening from the perspective of their character.)

“During both sessions I had some native speakers and a couple of other Spanish teachers as some of the characters, to add to the challenge for my students.

“For our “duels,” we let the players pose with swords (my husband collects swords) for some cool pictures, but then the duel is settled by the roll of the dice. Instead of rock/paper/scissors, we try to find something that fits in the theme of the game. Since they play the dice game in the Pirate movies, we use dice for this game.

“Thanks again for some great entertainment opportunities!”

Melissa then did the same during the pandemic… Here’s how that went.

“Covid canceled the fourth quarter and exams for the end of the 2020 school year and affected how we did things in the following school year. My administration agreed to allow me to host the mystery dinner exam April 2021, as long as masks were worn and no food was served.

“To continue to allow the poison crucial to A Dead Man’s Chest (‘El Cofre de un Muerto‘), I substituted stickers. The player needed to tell me they were going to poison someone, then get close enough to put the sticker on the victim without getting caught. Not as cool, but good enough. Despite the obligatory changes, the students were thrilled to be allowed to have this party as their exam.

“Being pirates, there was a good deal of fighting. For each fight they posed for a cool picture, then settled the duel with the roll of the dice. I’ll include a couple of those also. Poor Salamanca ended up being sacrificed to the volcano! She had annoyed enough people that no one came to her rescue and the natives threw her in! I am happy to report that they did a great job overall and got good grades on their exam!”

More photos from her first party:

And phots from her second exam (during the pandemic):

Way out West party photos from Alex

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In 2017 Alex sent us their Way out West party photos – enjoy.

(Some of our pages of party photos are getting long and unwieldy, so we are moving some photos to the blog. Way out West, as our most popular game, is one of the worst culprits, so as an ongoing project we’re moving some old photos to their own blog page.)

Group photo of everyone playing Way out West – photo by Alex
Playing Way out West – photos by Alex

Hand-crafted game materials

Alex also created hand-crafted game materials (character books and so on) for Way out West, as shown below:

Hand-crafted player materials – photos by Alex

Click here to learn more about Way out West.

Way out West is also available in German and in French (as La Ruée vers Cactusville).

Looking back at 2022

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2022 felt like the pandemic was finally behind us. While COVID-19 is still around, it’s not the terror it once was, and the world (or at least, our part of it) is on the road to recovery.

From our perspective, that means people are gathering in groups – and where there are gatherings, there are murder mystery parties!

The recovery that started in 2021 continued in 2022, and it looks as if 2023 could be one of our best years ever.
We’ve been doing these reviews since 2013 – you can read them all here.

Best-selling games

Our best-selling games for 2022 were Way out West, Murder on the Istanbul Express, and A Speakeasy Murder.

Way out West

That’s a change from previous years, where A Will to Murder and Casino Fatale have usually been in the top three (they’re now in the top 5). Murder on the Istanbul Express was published in 2021, and we’re pleased it has been selling so well.

New and updated murder mystery games

We published one new game in 2022, Vanished in Vegas by Jennifer Vals.

We also updated Curse of the Pharaoh and Happy Birthday RJ to our current format.

An unusual side project

We were contacted by a Houston-based organisation looking for a steampunk-themed game for over 100 people. This was a one-off commission, and they were looking for a different style of game than our usual heavily-plotted murder mysteries. So we wrote a game involving rival families, secret societies, pirates and map exploration.

Last year’s goals

We set ourselves a few goals in 2020:

Improve our website – expand the game themes and bring a little animation to the book covers: While we added a little animation to the book covers (a slight zoom when you hover over them), we didn’t do as much with themes as we were hoping. We made some improvements, but only some. Maybe in 2023.

We also made numerous small changes to the website – such as adding icons so visitors can easily see which games have combat or poisoning.

Resolve the payment process glitches: These continued throughout 2022, unfortunately. Something about the Paypal payment process results in some emails ending up in spam filters. However, we made another change just before Christmas, which seems to have made a big improvement.

Continue to work on new games: We hadn’t expected to publish Vanished in Vegas and were delighted it came out ahead of programme.

Run games online: Steve ran Reunion with Death online in 2022 – he also ran Murder on the Istanbul Express offline at a games convention.

Reunion with Death – online

Change the focus of our two online games and promote them as games the host can play: We have now done this and now promote Reunion with Death and Death in Venice as games you can host and play.

So overall a successful year. We didn’t quite do everything we wanted to, but we did most of it and sometimes did more.

Plans for next year

Improve our website: Always a work in progress. We have no specific plans for this year, but it would be remarkable if we didn’t improve the website in lots of small ways.

Updated games: We’re currently updating Davy Jones’ Locker to the latest format, and then Way out West will be on the list.

New games: With a bit of luck and a fair wind, A Purrfect Murder (dark goings-on at a cat show) will be our next game.

Shine light on our French and German language partners: We have two partners who have translated many of our games in French and German: FranceMurder and Krimispiele-Seite. When appropriate, we will mention them more in our posts.

Wrapping up

2022 represented a welcome recovery after the pandemic. It was a good year for us; hopefully, we can build on it for 2023.

A Heroic Death for Christmas

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Debbie Townsend sent us her A Heroic Death photos which she hosted for a Christmas family gathering in a Welsh manor.

She used both the adults and the children’s version of A Heroic Death and writes, “It was a fantastic evening’s entertainment, some really competitive players. Children loved being involved too. No-one guessed who the murderer was. Thank you so much!”

Click here to learn more about A Heroic Death.

A Heroic Death is also available in German as Ein heldenhafter Tod.

A Speakeasy Murder for charity

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Sönke Busch of Lympselon Krimi Events recently used Mord in der Flüsterkneipe (the German translation of A Speakeasy Murder) recently raised over €3,000 for the Weisser Ring (White Ring weisser-ring.de) charity that supports crime victims in Germany.

Sönke writes:

“We bring complete strangers with different backgrounds, pasts, political and worldly views, sexual identification and lifestyles to the same table and stand for cosmopolitanism and tolerance with our Krimi Dinners.

“Since in every Krimi Dinner a person comes to harm and during the dinner the whole thing is seen from a playful point of view and laughed about and is also the reason for the merry get-together, we want to remind you that reality is different.

“Victims of violence and other crimes have experiences that we do not wish on anyone. These experiences are sometimes difficult to deal with and inflict not only psychological but also material damage on the victim and their relatives.

“This year, as in the last four years, we would like to remind people of the reality and do something good. That is why we are again organizing a crime dinner for a good cause. We have chosen the Weisser Ring E.V as a donation target and would like to support their work. The full-time and volunteer helpers there do great work. The volunteers sacrifice their free time to help others in explosive life situations. I was there myself and talked to the local association in Mainz to find out about their work. In a nice conversation, all my questions were answered and I have a good feeling about the work of the Weisser Ring.

“This year we collected 3000 Euros for Weisser Ring by auctioning and raffling donated games, crime dinners and other things.”

German and French Translations

Mord in der Flüsterkneipe is available from our partner at Die Besten Familienspiele.

And Drame à Chicago is the French translation of A Speakeasy Murder, available at FranceMurder.

Click here to learn more about A Speakeasy Murder.

A Speakeasy Murder is also available in French (as Drame à Chicago) and German (as Mord in der Flüsterkneipe)