To coincide with the launch of Murder on the Dancefloor, we asked the game’s author, Terence Smith, for a few words describing where the game came from: “My involvement with Freeform Games began with my 15th birthday in 2010. I was a drama student at school and, along with my friends, played Lei’d to Rest. This was followed by many more over the...
I talked a couple of posts back about helping to run Cafe Casablanca, but what I didn't talk about is how I used our "three golden rules" to guide my decisions during the game. As our hosts know, we have three golden rules when it comes to hosting a murder mystery game: Is it fun? Will it spoil the game for anyone else? Make it up! The fourth...
We provide safe, simple rules in our murder mystery games, but sometimes it’s fun to make those rules more closely align to the real world. Here are some examples. These first two are from Denise Knebel in the USA. The secret cupboard One of our games (I’m not going to say which) has a secret cupboard which is normally managed by the host. Here’s...
Last year I talked about how Mo and I attended The King’s Musketeers, a weekend long freeform. This year’s weekend game was Cafe Casablanca, and while Mo played Philip Marlowe, I was one of the six “directors” (ie, a host). Mo, looking very dapper as Philip Marlowe Cafe Casablanca is based on Hollywood thrillers and wartime dramas of the ‘30s and...
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...