Here's a roundup of murder mystery party games by Hexagamers. They’ve taken a good long look at the various murder mystery companies that you can find on the internet and are trying them out to judge which really are the best. Happily, we’re in the list - but they have yet to try one of our games. We’re looking forward to their feedback when they...
Cornelius and Janice conspiring on the balcony We don’t often get to play our games, but last weekend I played in A Will to Murder. Guy, one of my tabletop roleplaying friends, had bought A Will to Murder, and wanted to try one it with some of his friends. Although he didn’t ask me to run it (I thought he was going to), I said I was happy to play...
Back on 20th July we ran a playtest of our new game Death on the Rocks, in London. Playtesting is an important part of our development process. However well a murder mystery game’s been written and edited, it can’t be considered finished until it’s been thoroughly tested. We call it ‘playtesting’ because it takes the form of playing through the...
Last year I talked about how Mo and I attended The King’s Musketeers, a weekend long freeform. This year’s weekend game was Cafe Casablanca, and while Mo played Philip Marlowe, I was one of the six “directors” (ie, a host). Mo, looking very dapper as Philip Marlowe Cafe Casablanca is based on Hollywood thrillers and wartime dramas of the ‘30s and...
So how was 2013 for Freeform Games? Actually, it wasn’t great. Sales were down by about 20% in 2013 compared to 2012. In fact, it was our worst year since 2005. Ouch! Affiliate sales were particularly badly hit and were down about 40%. We believe that much of this is thanks to Google’s latest algorithm updates. Over the last couple of years...
Our murder mystery games are different from many others in many ways, one of which is that our games need a dedicated host. Instead of playing a detective or a suspect along with everyone else, our hosts oversee play and coordinate events and the rules. I know that some people would like to be able to host their game and play in it, but our games...
First choose the right game! Our best-selling mystery at this time of year is of course The Night before Christmas. This game, set in a high-class New England family's hunting lodge, is for 12–15 guests and a host, and we also have 5 free extra characters that you can add in if you need more. Of course, The Night before...
Death on the Gambia is our oldest game. I wrote it in the mid-90s, before Freeform Games came into being. I can’t exactly remember where the idea for Death on the Gambia came from, but I remember that I created it after I played a massive freeform called Home of the Bold in 1992. Death on the Gambia - our first murder mystery game Although Home...
Here's what we're working on right now. The Speakeasy Slaughter, our upcoming 1920's Prohibition game for 15 to 32 guests, is making progress. Our playtest in London didn't happen in September as originally planned, but we're still hoping to get another playtest in later this year. We've provided a wealth of comments that author Becky Channon...
It's mid-September and we're already thinking about Halloween, just a few weeks away now. We've got two Halloween-themed party games. The first is Halloween Lies, which is a Halloween-themed version of Hollywood Lies. (The two games are basically the same - just the setting has changed. So if you've played Hollywood Lies, you've already played...