Our murder mystery games include tips for beginners to help them get started. There are always two tips, each one suggesting that the player go and talk to another player about something. We include tips for beginners for two primary reasons: First (and most importantly), the tips give a new player some idea of how our games are played. If you're...
Sometimes we are asked about expanding our murder mysteries to include many more characters than we had originally written. Now, if you need just one or two extra characters, you can use the free extra characters that we and other customers have written for the games. Or you could write your own (and if you send that character back to us and we...
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...
A Heroic Death introduced a new concept for us - locations. And with locations comes rules for using them. We’ve since also use them in Lord and Lady Westing’s Will, and also the 7 expanded characters used for Murder at Sea. While each game will have its own specific location rules to suit that particular game, these are the rules upon which they...
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...
We’re always very happy for our games to be used to raise money for charity. While we have commercial licences available for people who want to run our games commercially, if you want to run one for charity, here’s what you have to do: Choose a game. We suggest that you pick one of our larger games such as Murder at Sea, Casino Fatale or...