Karolina Soltys, author of A Purrfect Murder, appears in this video speaking at the Immersive Experience Network’s Live Immersive Design Symposium in October 2023.
Game design discussion on YouTube
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Freeform Games murder mystery blog
Updating Davy Jones’ Locker and Way out West
Our ongoing project to update our games to our latest format continues with Davy Jones’ Locker and Way out West. Davy Jones’ Locker 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...
Murder mystery party games you can simultaneously host and play
Our murder mystery games require a separate host because we include items and money and abilities like pickpocketing and rules such as combat and arrests. We find a dedicated host helps the game run smoothly. However, the games we developed during lockdown (Reunion with Death and Death in Venice) are more straightforward because we designed them...
Updating Happy Birthday R.J.
We’ve recently updated Happy Birthday R.J. to our latest format. Happy Birthday R.J. was originally published in 2003. It was our fifth game and was written by Lisa Butler (who later wrote Snow Business and Casino Fatale). Next year it celebrates its 20th birthday! Taking place on SouthSpoon Ranch in 1980s Texas, Happy Birthday R.J. is full of...
Adding fighting and poison to a murder mystery party
One of of our customers recently wrote to us asking which games have combat in them.
We realised we hadn’t made it easy for our customers to work out which games have combat and which ones don’t, so we have added icons to each games’ page to make that clear.
Adding 20 players to Hollywood Lies
We were recently asked how we would add around 20 additional characters to Hollywood Lies. That’s a lot, and as we’ve already talked about that for Casino Fatale, I thought I’d explain what I would do for Hollywood Lies. Hollywood Lies starts with 32 characters, and there are two additional characters. So an additional 20 characters means you...
Updating The Night Before Christmas
We’ve just updated The Night Before Christmas into our current format. Written by Tracy Bose and initially published in 2004, we haven’t significantly updated the game in over a decade and it needed a reformat. Reformatting So while we haven’t changed the plots or characters, we’ve made numerous changes: The characters are now in the 8-page...
And now hosts can play too!
We occasionally receive criticism about the role of the host: some people want to be able to host a murder mystery game and play it at the same time. While we’ve written before about hosting and playing our games, it’s not always satisfactory because of what the host needs to know and manage. But that changes with Death in Venice and Reunion with...
Never too old to learn new tricks
The recent playtests for The Reality is Murder worked really well. We asked for playtesters via our newsletter, and eventually had four groups providing us with great feedback that really improved the game and ironed out a few kinks that we hadn’t spotted. And even though we have been writing and publishing these games for nearly 20 years, I’m...
Death on the Gambia and Snow Business updates
Front cover for the Death on the Gambia cover booklet You may not have noticed, but we've given Death on the Gambia a refresh. Death on the Gambia was our first game, and it's been in need of a refresh ever since we reformatted our games. So it now each character has a character booklet like all our newer games. Unlike our recent Hollywood Lies...