Omar Garcia has kindly shared their Way out West murder mystery party photos with us.
I like the venue and how it has been decorated – it looks very authentic.
And a very grisly murder scene…
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).
2023 was Freeform Games’ most successful year in sales since we started in 2001. Growth has continued strongly since the end of the pandemic, and our sales have finally beaten our pre-pandemic best.
We’ve been doing these reviews since 2013 – you can read them here.
Our best-selling games for 2023 were Way out West, A Speakeasy Murder, and Casino Fatale.
These three, along with Murder on the Istanbul Express and A Will to Murder, are consistently our best-selling games.
As for our French and German partners:
FranceMurder’s bestsellers were Réunion Mortelle (Reunion with Death), Istanbul Express (Murder on the Istanbul Express), and Mort à Venise (Death in Venice)
Die Besten Familienspiel’s bestsellers were Mord in der Flüsterkneipe (A Speakeasy Murder), Hollywoods Lügen (Hollywood Lies), and Eiskalte Geschäfte (Snow Business)
Neither partner has our entire range of games, but it’s striking how little overlap exists between them (and us). Our perennial bestseller, Way out West, doesn’t feature at all – but most of our customers are American, so I guess that’s not surprising.
We published two games in 2023: The Roswell Incident (a 1947 alien-themed game for 10-13 players set in Roswell, New Mexico) and A Purrfect Murder (a modern game for 9-12 players set at a cat-fancy show).
We also updated Davy Jones’ Locker and Way out West to our current format.
(We also removed our Way out West book from sale on Amazon. It didn’t sell, so it wasn’t worth maintaining.)
We set ourselves a few goals in 2023:
Improve our website: We made a massive change by moving to WooCommerce for our shop. So now our online store looks much like other stores rather than the bespoke store we had previously. This has three benefits – it should feel like a more familiar online shopping experience for customers (particularly new customers), it is easier for us to maintain, and it has addressed many of the niggly issues we had with downloads going missing under the old system.
We also started putting more customer stories and photos onto our blog rather than just on the game stories page. That means the stories stand out better, and the stories pages will be quicker to load (they were getting rather long and slow).
We’ve also paid for dedicated server bandwidth, so our site should respond more quickly than it used to.
So, a clear success.
Updated games: We updated Way out West and Davy Jones’ Locker. That was everything we planned to do, so that was a success.
New games: We published A Purrfect Murder (as planned) and The Roswell Incident (which wasn’t). So we over-delivered there.
Shine light on our French and German language partners: We’ve been linking to them more on the blog, and I’ve included them in our review above. Maybe we could have done more, so perhaps a partial success.
With three clear successes (and one partial success), we achieved everything we intended to do in 2023 and perhaps a bit more.
Improve our website: This is always a work in progress, but we need to let the shop settle in and sort out any teething problems that may arise. We will also move more photos across to the blog.
Updated games: Court in the Act is the last game still in the old format, so we will update this year.
New games: We’ve got a couple of games in the early stages of preparation, but nothing we want to commit to right now.
2023 was an excellent year for us. Hopefully, the changes we’ve made to the shop have given us a good foundation for 2024.
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).
Our ongoing project to update our games to our latest format continues with Davy Jones’ Locker and Way out West.
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 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.
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.
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).
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.)
Hand-crafted game materials
Alex also created hand-crafted game materials (character books and so on) for Way out West, as shown below:
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).
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.
Our best-selling games for 2022 were Way out West, Murder on the Istanbul Express, and A Speakeasy Murder.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
2022 represented a welcome recovery after the pandemic. It was a good year for us; hopefully, we can build on it for 2023.
As you might expect, the pandemic dominated 2021 for Freeform Games, but we slowly started to recover from 2020.
We’ve been doing these reviews since 2013 – you can read them all here.
While 2020 showed a strong interest in playing our games online (using Zoom or similar), in 2021 we sold fewer copies of our online games (Reunion with Death and Death in Venice). Instead, our smaller games continue to sell well (a trend that started in 2020).
We suspect that’s because although many restrictions have been lifted with the vaccine rollout, many people are still wary about large gatherings. However, smaller groups (maybe family and close friends) appear to be okay, hence the popularity of our smaller games.
And while October and November had strong sales (compared to 2020), December’s dropped back. This was presumably due to the Omicron variant and fewer parties being held. (That’s not surprising – our own party season was quiet, too.) We’re keeping a close eye on how Omicron plays out, but early signs are looking promising.
Our best-selling games for 2021 were Way out West (10-24 guests), then A Will to Murder (6-9 guests), then Casino Fatale (15-30 guests). Casino Fatale sold half as well as the other two, demonstrating the popularity of games for smaller groups.
As mentioned above, Reunion with Death (6-9 guests) and Death in Venice (5-9 guests) didn’t sell well, despite being for smaller groups. I think this is because we promoted them for online play. Both can be played in person—and because they are simpler (no combat or items) they are suitable for the host to play. So we are thinking about promoting them differently.
Our new game, Murder on the Istanbul Express (7-11 guests) has started strongly, although time will tell if that’s just because it’s the new game.
We published one new game in 2021, Murder on the Istanbul Express. It’s been on our to-do list for ages, so this year we knuckled down and pushed it over the finish line. We’re really pleased with it.
We also updated The Night Before Christmas and Dazzled to Death to our current format.
We also updated the covers of all our games to make them more striking and obvious.
We created a page on itch.io for our games. Itch is ‘an open marketplace for independent digital creators with a focus on independent video games.’ It also has roleplaying games and larps, and we thought we’d add some of our games.
We’re not expecting sales through our itch.io page, but we have our free version of Way out West there and it gives us a little exposure to the indie gaming scene that we might not otherwise have.
We set ourselves a few goals in 2020:
Improve our website: We made a few improvements this year:
Publish Murder on the Istanbul Express: Published!
Another new online game: We talked about another online game, but given the drop in sales of Reunion with Death and Death in Venice (as noted above), we didn’t push that.
So that’s two out of three goals achieved.
Improve our website: Specifically, we have plans to expand the game themes and bring a little animation to the book covers.
Resolve the payment process glitches: We’ve had a few payment glitches lately—customers not receiving the download email (or it going straight to the spam folder). So we’ll investigate and fix that.
Continue to work on new games: We have a few new games in the pipeline, but realistically I don’t think we’ll be ready to publish any in 2022.
Run games online: We will try something new and run an occasional game online. We’ll promote this using our Facebook page.
Games the host can play: Change the focus of our two online games and promote them as games the host can play. As they don’t include items or money or the complicated rules that require an independent host, they are ideal if you want to host and also play in a game. (Steve ran Death in Venice this way back in 2020.)
Although 2021 was bad, we weathered the pandemic and released a new game. Sales are slowly recovering and as normality returns, hopefully we will return to playing our games in person.
Following on from our birthday post last month, I thought it would be interesting to show when we published each game. I’ve excluded translations to keep things simple…
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
One of the things that amazes me is how my memory has changed everything. I think of A Speakeasy Murder as one of our newer games, but it’s now over seven years old! And was it really in 2009 when we published The Karma Club?
We have received a great story from Rosie about her Way out West Zoom party.
I ran Way out West via zoom for a group of old school friends last weekend and it was so much fun! The players said it was one of the best evenings they’ve had all year.
I wrote one extra character. My husband played it and said it worked really well- in fact he got quite a few murder accusations (is that a mark of success?!)
(I wrote the character so that it could be played by male or female as I’ve noticed there seem to be fewer female parts in the murder mysteries I’ve seen- but then saw you’d given the stable hand a name already so he is Pete.)
Zoom worked pretty well as a medium, I only have the basic account so we had to restart the call every 40 minutes which wasn’t as annoying as it sounded as the game broke fairly neatly into 40 min chunks. A word of advice to others to check out their breakout room settings- they need to tick the box to allow players to exit breakout rooms themselves!
Thanks for a lovely evening.
You can now download Rose’s extra character, stable hand Jay Sidwell, with the other extra characters in the same place you download the main files.
Her note about gender balance is interesting – we try to be even in the genders across our games and include a good number of genderless characters to keep things flexible, obviously we can always do better.
In fact originally her character, the stable hand, was male. That’s because the stable hand, Pete, is mentioned once in Way out West – they’re the poor soul who finds Zeke’s body. So we’ve changed Pete to Jay and made them genderless.
Way out West now has three extra characters, and you can see the full list of extra characters for all our games here.