Tag Archives: Lockdown stories

Stories of running our games in lockdown

Freeform Games in 2020

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Unsurprisingly, 2020 was all about the pandemic for Freeform Games.

2020 had started well, with sales in January and February building on 2019 (which was a good year for us). And then in March the pandemic properly reached the UK and USA and our sales dropped off a cliff…

We’ve been doing these reviews since 2013 – you can read them all here.

Learning to play our games online

With lockdown, our amazing customers started playing our games online—using Zoom or Discord or Google Hangouts or whatever system they found easiest.

That inspired us to both create games specifically for online play, and also to learn how to play our “normal” games online.

So for most of 2020 that’s what we’ve been doing – learning to play our games online. And also sales dropped off a cliff in March, things picked back up. Not to 2019 levels, but our sales for 2020 were similar to those in 2017.

Best-selling games

2020 brought a change to our best-selling games, with new online game Reunion with Death coming third (close behind perennial favourite Way out West). A Will to Murder topped our best-sellers list in 2020.

***Reunion with Death*** – our third most popular game of 2020

Overall our top three games accounted for a hefty 35% of our sales. It’s noticeable that in 2020 our smaller games have been more popular, which is I think a reflection of the smaller games being easier for online play.

Three new games

We published three new games in 2020.

Reunion with Death by Mo Holkar. Written specifically for the lockdown, and set in a hotel where everyone is locked in their rooms. We also produced a festive version, Christmas Reunion with Death (but I’m not counting that as a separate game).

Death in Venice also by Mo. Another lockdown murder mystery, this time everyone is locked in their cabins aboard a luxury yacht.

The Food is to Die For by Anastasia Kulpa, set in a restaurant. This has been close to publication for a couple of years now, and in 2020 we finally rolled up our sleeves and published it.

We also updated Under the Big Top, to bring it into line with our newer format.

Last year’s goals

We set ourselves a few goals in 2020:

Improve our website: We made a few improvements this year:
- We improved the look and feel by as increasing the overall type size and line spacing
- We improved the right-hand menu on the games pages to make it easier to see new and best-selling games.
- We changed the style of our game cover graphics for our new games – we’ll update our earlier games as we go along.
- Our blog became more important as we posted lots of stories and advice about how to play our games online.
Publish The Food is to Die For and Murder on the Istanbul Express. So a partial success as we published The Food is to Die For. Murder on the Istanbul Express will have to wait for 2021.
Finish updating Under the Big Top: This was originally planned for 2019, but we updated it in 2020.

Plans for next year

Improve our website: Our website is key to our business and so we’re always looking to improve it. I don’t think we’ll ever not have this as a goal.
Publish Murder on the Istanbul Express: With The Food is to Die for published, we’ll concentrate on Murder on the Istanbul Express. And after that, we’ve got Death at the Derby lined up.
Another new online game: Even if the pandemic disappears (and I think that’s for the long-term), it seems there’s a space for online murder mystery party games and so we’d like to publish another.

Summary

So although 2020 was bad, we weathered the pandemic and have learned more about playing our games online.

As the vaccine is rolled out and normality returns, hopefully we will return to playing our games in person.

Lord and Lady Westing’s Will – online!

A Heroic Death in Lockdown

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A Heroic Death is one of our more complex games in terms of moving parts – it has superpowers and hidden identities and specific locations. So we never thought it would be a candidate for online play during coronavirus lockdown.

How wrong we were!

Eve Bennett successfully ran A Heroic Death with her friends spread across three cities, two in France and one in the UK (and with seven different nationalities, so a real international mix).

Technical stuff – Zoom, Slack and a dedicated app

Here’s Eve:

“Similarly to what someone described in a previous blog of yours, we used Zoom, but we used the breakout rooms function to represent the different rooms in the superheroes’ base (according to the plan provided with the game).

“So players could go to different rooms to have private conversations. For the items and abilities, my partner (who’s handily a software engineer) created an app that functioned as a virtual wallet for each player (see photo).

“We also set up a private channel on Slack (see example below) for each player with them and us, the two hosts, which they used to tell us when they wanted to move to a different room or use an item or ability or get stuff from, or leave stuff in, one of the bedrooms.

“Here’s the document that we sent to the players to explain all the virtual game mechanics in full.” (Note – this is an MS Word document that will download if you click on it.)

I believe that Zoom’s breakout rooms function is only available with the paid version – but if you are technically minded there are other options such as Discord.

So how did it go?

“It was a really great evening and everyone has been telling us how much they loved it and how it was the most fun they’d had in weeks.

“However, it was pretty hectic for us hosts, even with two of us! It’s a shame that the players had to rely on us to move them to different rooms as it was hard to keep on top of that as well as the items, abilities, hangover cures, etc. But we managed, more or less!”

Eve did later say that if she were doing it again she would set the game space up using lots of Google Hangouts (as Peal described previously) as using Zoom meant that the hosts had to move everyone in and out of the breakout rooms.

“In this photo you can see all the participants. You can probably guess who’s who, but just in case, from left to right…

Top row: Hosts 1 & 2 (we went for a Red Dwarf reference as the Host is supposed to be a hologram!), Miguel (in his cleaning supplies cupboard), InvisoGirl.
Second row: Shaman, Puss, Bloody Mary (actual bloody mary made with passata as she couldn’t find tomato juice not pictured), Ice Queen.
Third row: Masked Crusader, WhizzoGirl (who kept styling her hair and reapplying makeup throughout), Doctor Robot (Head and) Neck, S.
Bottom row: The Russian, Captain Amazing! (underpants over tights not pictured, but we did catch a glimpse at one point!).

“I’d told everyone not to worry too much about costumes, but as you can see they made an amazing effort in the circumstances!

“So thank you very much to all at Freeform Games for keeping us thoroughly entertained for an evening (and longer in the case of us hosts)!”

Decorating your venue – lockdown style!

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One of our customers, Peal, got in touch with us recently to share with us a site they had prepared for lockdown Murder at Sea with 20 guests.

We’re really impressed – it’s a great way to set the scene for your online murder mystery party.

They built their site using Google sites. I’m not sure if they used one of the templates or if they built it from scratch (possibly the Event template). Other free website builders are available.

Murder at Sea – Home page

This is the home page. They’ve used an image of a suitable liner and included our introductory text from the game. They also included a couple of checklists.

Before the Party Checklist

Read your character description and (if possible) print out your abilities.
Read the rules to understand how to use items and abilities.
Ensure Zoom is working on your computer (Phones may be hard)
Ensure Google Hangouts is working on your computer.
You can check this by going to the map page and clicking one of the rooms in the ship.

On the Day

Reread your character details again!
Do you have?
- Booze
- Food/Snacks
- A snazzy outfit and your character prepped
- Phone and Laptop Charger

Then head on over to The Great Staircase and join the Zoom Meeting
(Murder at Sea starts with the lights going out and Captain Bayard being shot – I don’t know how they staged that.)

The map

This page contains the locations where the game will be played. The Great Staircase is the main Zoom location – that’s where the party will start. (Note that Zoom has a 40 minute time limit if you don’t have the paid version. Jitsi is a free alternative, but lacks some of the features that Zoom has.)

The other 11 locations (The Dining Room, a First Class Cabin, an Empty Deck and so on) are all Google Hangouts that the players can use to have private conversations.

(I’ve explained how you can set up Google Hangouts in this way at the bottom of the page.)

Character Details

On this page, everyone can get access to the information about their character.

Cast List

This is our cast list – it’s our cast list pdf embedded in the page.

So for example, clicking on Christina Younger takes you to the page below:

The three links on this page (Items, Abilities, Character Description) all go to protected Google Drive folders that the host has set up. Access has been shared with the relevant player only, so only they have access.

You could also use Dropbox or OneDrive – or ownDrive as one of our other customers recently described here.

Zoom Backgrounds

Zoom lets you add a virtual background to your calls, so rather than seeing your normal background you appear to be somewhere more appropriate.

So here the host found (and created) lots of thematic image files (.pngs) for their players to use.

Here are some examples of images – one of an Edwardian room and the other a background for one of the characters – this one for Elizabeth James with the Union Jack.

There were even animated angel wings, presumably for characters who had died during the game.

Rules

The final page, Rules, has links to our standard rules for poison, pickpocketing and so on.

Google Hangouts

Here’s how you can set up a video call that people can just drop into and out of.

1 – go to https://hangouts.google.com/

2 – In the middle of the screen you should see:

3 Click on “Video Call”

4 You will get a new pop-up with the video call. You’ll also get a dialogue box like this – just close it by clicking the X in the top right corner.

5 You’re now in a video call, all alone.

6 Copy the URL of the call, which will look like “https://hangouts.google.com/call/…” and then a random list of letters and numbers.

7 Save that URL somewhere. Anyone can then click on that URL and go straight into your video call. (And I mean anyone, so be careful about making it too public!)

8 Set up several hangouts – and give them appropriate names such as “On deck” or “At the bar” or “Under the gazebo”.

New lockdown murder mystery – Reunion of Death

Lockdown Way out West

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Following on from our last post about running a A Will To Murder in lockdown, we have another lockdown story – Way out West.

Paul Barnard used Zoom and ownCloud (a bit like Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive) to run Way out West across five houses. Here’s how he did it.

Way out West across five houses

“With the Covid-19 isolation policies in place it was not possible for the family to get together for a face to face dinner. Instead we held the party using a zoom video conference across five different houses.

“I made images of all the items, Abilities, Secrets, Clues and Money. I created a “wallet” for each player using cloud storage (such as Dropbox) and provided each player with a link to their personal wallet that they could access from pretty much any device using a browser. I placed the item etc for each player in their wallet as a starting point.

Shared folders in ownCloud – one for each character, shared with that character’s player.

“With that all in place I sent around the character booklets, rules and general information ahead of the dinner. Game play went pretty much as expected with everyone on the conference, eating our various dinners and chatting in character. We had all dressed up in costumes, with one enterprising guest making a deputy hat from an Amazon delivery box.

“The big difference for this remote experience was that we used text messages for the private discussions and scheming. This really suited the younger attendees as they tend to do this all day anyway :-). A couple of the older attendees actually called each other on their phones and there was a bit of whispered background chat which had everyone on the conference straining to overhear.

“The participants were able to copy and paste their cards to the text messages when they needed to share them with others. For the secret stuff, like picking pockets, the thief did it via the bartender just like normal but again using texts. We used rock, paper, scissors on the conference just like we were face to face. It actually added to the intrigue when the bartender and one of the other guests started rock, paper scissors at seemingly random points through the evening.

“If things got stolen then the Bartender simply moved the item from the original players wallet to the new owners. This was achieved on a computer connected to the cloud storage folder. This worked surprisingly well as the original owner was even less aware they had been pickpocketed than if we had been playing face to face. A startled cry of “Where has my map gone?” 30 minutes after the pickpocketing again adding to the game.

“Our timings were handled exactly as in the game handout and the evening flowed perfectly despite the need to type texts to many people. At the end of the game the opinion of everyone was “when are we doing the next one?”

“During these times of forced separation and growing isolation your game provided a great excuse to gather the family together for an evening that everyone thoroughly enjoyed and greatly appreciated. We will be purchasing another of the games shortly.”

Paul then followed up with some great tips:

Lockdown party tips

“First create a wallet for each player. Use a cloud service like DropBox. I used ownCloud as I had an account for that already. A free account is big enough to hold the wallets. I created the wallets by making a folder for each player in the cloud storage.

We have a lot of girls in our family so I adjusted some of the players sex for our game. For each wallet create a share link. This is done on most services by right clicking the folder and selecting “Create Link” . This is the link that you will share with the guest playing that role.

I added the links to the invitations for each person. I created my own invitations as I needed to provide some help to people to get setup and understand how things worked. “ (See further below for Blaise’s invitation.)

“Second create virtual cards for the abilities, items, money, Clues and Secrets. I did this by creating JPG images copied from the pdf player booklets.

“Important: The filenames for all cards must be uniquely named to move them from folder to folder. I randomly numbered all the items and money so that where they came from was not obvious (see picture below, for an example).

Ability filenames were numbered from 1 to the maximum use. (SuddenInsight-1.jpg, SuddenInsight-2.jpg and so on.) I then deleted the ability cards as they were used. (You could just have one copy in the wallet and trust people to only use them the permitted number of times.)

A Wallet – ability names greyed out. Note that the filename of each of the money jpgs is unique.

“Above is the content of Blaise Sadler’s wallet at the start of the game. I’ve hidden the ability names to not ruin the experience for other players.”

This is what Blaise’s locker looks like on an iPhone.

“If you want to look at an object you just click it and you see it.”

“Third create a contacts group for the characters. As we used text and instant messaging for private conversations I collected everyone’s phone number and created a contacts group for everyone. Save the list as a contacts card and then attendees can click the .vcf file to add all the characters to their device. Sending a text now just needs you to enter the character’s name.”

Way out West virtual party invitation

Here’s Paul’s invitation to his virtual Way out West. He created a pdf for each player, with unique links to their Wallet (I’ve blurred the urls). I really like the way he clearly explains how the game will be played and what technology will be used.

Going online – murder mystery games in a worldwide pandemic

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I’m sure I don’t need to mention the worldwide coronavirus pandemic currently underway, but please be responsible in organising a social gathering and make sure you follow the latest advice.

Playing ***Death on the Gambia*** before the days of social isolation

Some of our customers are doing that – and still hosting our murder mysteries…

A Will to Murder

Mariana who hosted A Will to Murder in self-isolation at the end of March.

She reports that “Everyone had a blast! It went really well. I think as the Lawyer I was a bit more busy than a typical game (not that I have one to compare by), because I had to be the one passing items between people.”

She’s explained what she did:

“I made 6 Google Hangout rooms, enough that at one time, everyone could be talking one on one. I named each room and posted a link to them. In chat, you could ask someone to come join you in the Library or whatever, but all conversations had to be in one of those rooms. That meant that people could walk in on people’s conversation, and you could see who was talking to whom, and as the Lawyer I could eavesdrop when someone used that ability.

“Items were in an ‘inventory’, a Google doc with people’s items that I as Host had access to and could move things around. It was a bit hectic keeping track of these things. I think I should’ve done a second host or fewer people (we ended up with 12 people so I added the optional characters).

“The only thing that didn’t work well is that we hit the limit of how many people can be in a Google Hangout at once (10 people). For announcements, there were roommates that could share a computer, but when a dramatic fight broke out, a few people didn’t get to witness it.

“Anyways, all in all a huge success. Two people left talking about doing another one.”

Mariana confirmed that she used rock-paper-scissors for combat (so as normal), and to poison someone “You needed to see them eat or drink while in the same room as you. In the invitation I had mentioned people might want to have snacks and booze on hand.”

(An aside – at some point soon Google will probably retire hangouts and replace it with Google Chat and Google Meet, which I’ve not used.)

Tech note

Give yourself plenty of time to sort out any technology issues before you start playing. Technology is wonderful, but we all have different levels of expertise and the various versions of Windows/iPhones/Android/Apple Mac devices don’t always play well together…