Christmas Lies – a present-day murder mystery party game with a Christmas-movie setting for 16 to 32 guests

Recommended for ages 12+
Costs US$49.99
Written by

Click here to buy the game

Christmas Lies is a dinner party murder mystery game for 16 to 32 guests and one or two hosts – download the free introductory pdf file.

As a special holiday treat, we now have a Christmas version of our ever-popular Hollywood Lies game

Join us in a thrilling evening of murder, blackmail, and movies. You will be in the middle of the action and it will be up to you to wheel and deal with the other guests. Can you achieve your goals, keep your secrets hidden and survive Christmas Lies? It's up to you.

Christmas Lies

It's award night and Tom Speed's latest film, Christmas Confidential, has just swept the board and garnered four Santas – for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Screenplay. Sadly, Tom Speed's award for Best Actor was accepted posthumously by his friend, Hayden Vicars, as Tom was killed in a driving accident late last night.

Despite this note of sadness, celebrations are in full swing at the Christmas Confidential post-award party. Deals are being cut for future productions and everyone is having a good time enjoying the atmosphere and mingling with Hollywood's movers and shakers.

Is there anything suspicious about Tom Speed's death? Who will win next year's Santas? Find out at Christmas Lies.

Christmas Lies lasts for about four hours and is suited to an evening. It is often played over a meal – a finger buffet if possible to allow guests to circulate and talk in private.

The free introductory pdf file contains an introduction to the game and a cast list of all the characters – plus details of how to buy the game.

Important note: Christmas Lies is an alternative version of one of our other games, Hollywood Lies. The characters and the plots are the same, so if your guests have previously played Hollywood Lies, they'll know the secrets of Christmas Lies too! The difference is that Christmas Lies is written specifically for a holiday-season party, while Hollywood Lies is suitable for any time of year.

These are the characters in Christmas Lies:

• Ash d'Lessey – Award-winning director of Christmas Confidential.
• Bernie Newman – Has come to Hollywood to become a movie star.
• Bobby Treveeno – Entertainer of the old school.
• Cass Dockery – Works for a small independent movie financier, but is looking to break into acting.
• Charlie Henderson-Plum – Played Skipper Primley, Christmas Confidential's British villain.
• CJ Vasquez – One of Christmas Confidential's co-producers.
• Claude Janvier – Composer who recently wrote the music for Ash d'Lessey's The Last Noel.
• Detective Arden Chase – One of Hollywood's finest detectives.
• Eddie Flax – One of Hollywood's many agents.
• Evrim Meric – Bit-part actor with a minor role in Christmas Confidential.
• Ghana Moon – Award-winning screenwriter of Christmas Confidential..
• Hayden Vicars – Co-producer of Christmas Confidential and Tom Speed's friend.
• Hunter Sharp – Independent film producer and director.
• Jackie Simpson – Actor fired from Christmas Confidential before filming started.
• Jam Lafayette – Owner of the Sacre Bleu! restaurant and TV celebrity chef.
• Joss Dawson – In the business a long time, first as an actor and now as an agent.
• Jules Milton – Manager of Spangles Hotel.
• Les Tytan – Mesmerist whose clients have included Charlie Henderson-Plum and Mel Cutter.
• Lou Egan – Respected Hollywood film director.
• Luca Delmonico – Comes from a very wealthy family and recently appeared in the movie The Night before Christmas.
• Max McNab – Bit-part actor struggling to get into the big time.
• Mel Cutter – The author of 'Cutter's Comments', a notorious newspaper column in the Hollywood News.
• Morgan Beech – Star of blockbuster movie Christmas Confidential.
• Nat Rankin – Character actor who recently appeared in Christmas Confidential as a villain – as usual.
• Pip Slater – One of Hollywood's many agents.
• Ronnie Manfred – Character actor who often plays evil henchmen.
• RT Markovitz – Press photographer for The Big Cheese, a newspaper.
• Sam Cortinelli – One of Christmas Confidential's stunt doubles. Sam is rumored to have 'family' connections.
• Shelly Wells – Owns TrixieCorp, a large corporation, but is now producing a movie.
• Terry Ford – Character actor who played Hatch, a bodyguard, in Christmas Confidential.
• Toy Shepherd – Comedian from the East Coast.
• Val Taylor – Actor and producer, co-producer of Christmas Confidential..

All the characters are of neutral gender, so they can be played by any mix of guests as required.

How Freeform Games Murder Mysteries Work

Christmas Lies is unlike many murder mystery games. Although the game starts with a murder, most of the characters have more important things to do than to investigate it. And the killing may not be over – it is unlikely that everyone will survive the remainder of the evening!

Christmas Lies is played just like a murder mystery game. You may be trying to solve the murder, but primarily you are (initially at least) concentrating on your own goals and objectives. Unlike most boxed murder mystery games, Christmas Lies lets you decide how to achieve your goals and thwart your enemies.

On the evening of the game the guests are met by the organizer, the Master (or Mistress) of Ceremonies. They then receive their detailed backgrounds - including dark secrets, objectives and money. The players can form alliances, blackmail each other, steal items and even try to make the best movie for next year. Along the way they may solve some of Christmas Lies's mysteries. What is the Post-Modern Freeform Movement up to? Who will get tickets to the charity ball? What really happened on the set of Snow Business? Which script will be made into a movie? And of course, how did Tom Speed die? Finally, the game concludes and everyone finds out how they did, and what secrets everyone else was concealing.

Extra characters

Sometimes you have too many guests and you need more characters. So we've written a free extra character for each of our games that you can add in, and some of our customers have created their own characters for their parties and are kindly willing to share them.

• 'Ginger' Roberts – freelance reporter in search of the Big Story. (Any)
  (by Freeform Games)
• Gwen Cortinelli – secretary and Sam Cortinelli's wife. (F)
  (by Jo Stinett)

Please note that we haven't always tested these – and they may not tie in exactly with our games.

IMPORTANT – if you've bought the game, you can download the files for these characters from the download page where you got your main game files. Contact us if you need the link and password to get back to that page.

Or contact us via Facebook (your query comment won't appear on Facebook itself, unless you choose for it to):