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...
Our next game, A Speakeasy Slaughter, has reached playtesting. It’s been playtested twice, but we want to test it one more time. When we test our games, we are looking mainly for player feedback (as opposed to feedback from the host, which is what we usually get from our customers). Here are the questions we ask our players: Which character were...
We love it when our customers adapt our games and make them their own. We’ve seen bespoke invitations, badges, items, handouts and character booklets. In fact, I think that anything that could be customised has been customised. Of course, we’re slightly embarrassed that our basic layout isn’t a bit better. But we’re the first to admit that...
When I'm not making murder mystery games for Freeform Games, one of the other things I do is… make other kinds of games. (I may have a bit of a games problem. Although if you acknowledge it, it isn't a problem, isn't that right?) So just lately I've been thinking about card games, particularly small ones that can be played in a family context –...
I’ve just finished the excellent book Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking by Susan Cain. In it, Cain outlines the differences between introverts and extroverts and how society (American society in particular) values extroverts over their quieter brethren. Introverts and extroverts enjoying The Karma Club Now, I’m an...
In Sharp and Sensibility, I played the British Prime Minister who, as well as running the country, had to deal with his demanding daughter and her friends. In the UK and Australia, the games became known as “freeforms” whilst in the USA they became known as “theater-style larps”. They are often run at games conventions. Thus Mo and I started...