Cover to A Heroic Death, a superhero murder mystery game.

A Heroic Death

(21 customer reviews)

$39.99

A Heroic Death is a downloadable murder mystery game for 8 to 12 guests and a host. The superheroes are trapped in their secret base – so who will save the world from the evil ReptoMan? And their manager has been found dead, so one of them is a killer and traitor… Written by Becky Channon. Recommended for ages 12+ or 15+ (two versions are included).

SKU: 49 Category: Tags: , , , , , , ,

A Heroic Death is a murder mystery game for 8 to 12 guests and a host. It is set on a secret superhero base, in the near future. Download the free introductory pdf file.

A Heroic Death is a heroic evening of crime-fighting, superpowers and Noble Justice! Your guests will be in the middle of the action, and it will be up to them to wheel and deal to get what they want. Will they achieve their goals, keep their secrets hidden, and survive A Heroic Death?

A Heroic Death is designed for ages 15+, as it includes references to alcohol – but it comes bundled with a special family-friendly version, at no extra charge. So you can play it with any age from 12 upwards!

"As always, we loved A Heroic Death!"
Andreah Mathews, United States

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See stories and pictures from A Heroic Death

Read the CityVille Post

The world is in jeopardy. As usual. And as usual, it's up to the SuperHeroicJusticeDoomSquad to save the day. The problem is that they all had a big party last night celebrating something exciting that they can't quite remember; and this morning, their manager Bernard was found dead on the lovely faux-sheepskin rug in their Lounge.

Their secret base, the location of this party, has impenetrable defences (being inside a giant dormant volcano, naturally) and it was locked shut all night – so they have come to the realization that the killer must have been one of the Squad… or possibly their cleaner, Miguel.

The big red 'World in Danger!' light is flashing in the control room, so they really need to get out there and defeat the bad guys, but there's another problem. Bernard was the only one who had the access code to the main computer which controls everything, and it somehow got logged out last night. Now the Heroes can neither speak to the outside world to find out what crisis is going on this time, nor can they turn off the SuperHeroicSuperiorAlarmSystems alarm and leave the base. The outside door (which is controlled by the main computer) is locked shut until the alarm system can be reset, and it has been specially made to withstand anything.

Our heroes need to find a way to get out of the base in time to save the world – and find out which of them is a murderer, and why – before it's too late!

A Heroic Death 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.

Note that A Heroic Death is a bit more complex than some of our other games. If you’ve not hosted one of our games before, you might want to allocate a bit longer to prepare for it and to read through how it’s going to work.

"So glad we picked this story, we definitely got our money's worth! Everyone had a blast with A Heroic Death and was impressed with all the plot twists, character backstory and abilities. Can't wait to host another event!"
Debbie Ma, Canada

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Expert
Suitable for expert hosts.

Includes rules for the use of poison.
Includes rules for the use of poison.

Uses superpowers instead of our usual combat rules.
Uses superpowers instead of our usual combat rules.

The free introductory pdf file contains an introduction to the game, a cast list of all the characters, and a copy of the CityVille Post.

Cast of characters

The SuperHeroicJusticeDoomSquad Register

  • Captain Amazing! – Charismatic and photogenic, Captain Amazing! founded the SuperHeroicJusticeDoomSquad (along with The Masked Crusader).
  • Doctor Robot-Neck – The squad’s second in command and its brains.
  • Bloody Mary – Bloody Mary likes fighting villains and drinking cocktails, and sometimes mixes them together.
  • WhizzoGirl – WhizzoGirl often acts as the Squad’s spokesperson and media liaison.
  • InvisoGirl – Unusually shy, InvisoGirl is known for her mischievous sense of humour.
  • Shaman – Once a librarian, Shaman is possessed by the spirit of a powerful Native American shaman.
  • Puss-in-Boots – A talking cat that wears clothes and walks on hind legs.
  • S. – The squad’s newest member, S. only joined yesterday and really likes snakes.
  • The Masked Crusader – The squad’s co-founder, The Masked Crusader rejoined the squad a month ago.
  • – Icy blast.
  • The Russian – A mysterious character with a surprisingly French accent.

The Staff Register

  • Miguel – A bespectacled cleaner with a poor grasp of English but a strong work ethic.

A Heroic Death is for 8 to 12 guests:

  • 8 guests (3 male, 3 female, 2 any)
  • 9 guests (3 male, 3 female, 3 any)
  • 10 guests (4 male, 4 female, 2 any)
  • 11 guests (4 male, 4 female, 3 any)
  • 12 guests (4 male, 4 female, 4 any)

You also need a host – someone to organize the party and ensure everything runs smoothly.

How Freeform Games murder mystery  games work

A Heroic Death is unlike other murder mystery games. Although the game starts with a murder, each character has several goals they must try to accomplish. While they may want to solve the murder, A Heroic Death contains plenty of other plots and secrets to keep everyone busy. A Heroic Death isn't scripted, and lets the players decide how to achieve their goals and thwart their enemies.

On the evening of the game the guests are met by the organizer, the HOST, and welcomed to the secret base.

They then receive their detailed backgrounds – including dark secrets, objectives and money. The fun then begins as they form alliances, blackmail each other, steal items and maybe even try to murder one another!

Finally, the game concludes and everyone finds out how they did, and what secrets everyone else was concealing.

Recommended for ages 15+  (or 12+ for the kid-friendly version)

We recommend the regular version of A Heroic Death for those aged 15+, as it contains references to alcohol. (This content is not present in the kids' version.)

Extra characters

Sometimes you have too many guests and need more characters. So most games have free extra characters (written by us or previous hosts) included in the download when you purchase the game.

  • 'Ginger' Roberts – freelance reporter in search of the Big Story. (Any)
    (by Freeform Games)
  • Acro-Bat – exchange student from Europe (Any)
    (by Andreah Mathews)
  • Officer Jones – dedicated public servant (Any)
    (by Andreah Mathews)

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

"Thank you for a great site, fantastic games, good service and very quick reply. Keep up the good work." Ole Martin Brodwall, Norway

Cast Iron Guarantee

We offer a Cast Iron Guarantee on all our murder mystery games. If you're not completely satisfied with A Heroic Death then please let us know within 30 days and we will refund you. See our full terms and conditions, and our refund policy.

Trouble downloading? If you have trouble downloading the game files, please first check your spam folder. If you still can't find the download email, contact us with the name of the game and the email address you used to purchase it, and we'll resend it.

21 reviews for A Heroic Death

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    Alex (verified owner) –

    We played with a group of nine. This was everybody’s first time doing a Freeform game, including my first time hosting. While hosting was a fair amount of prep work, it wasn’t terribly difficult, especially during the party; I never felt overworked or overwhelmed as the host, and I think it was harder for the newbie players than for me — there’s a lot to keep track of, and sometimes they missed details or forgot about things they could do that would have helped them. The players were mostly new to LARP (about half were D&D players). They did defeat the evil scheme, and about half of them correctly identified the murderer. People got very into the game and spent a long time debriefing and it seemed like they had a lot of fun. Many of them did a great job hamming it up and creating costumes.

    A few notes:

    – The instructions say to drop one character if your ninth player is female, and a different character if your ninth player is male. Our ninth player was female, but I feel like the male character tied in much more closely to the plot and several threads went awkwardly because of his absence. I would probably recommend keeping the ninth male character regardless of your gender mix and just dealing with it.
    – Due to our gender mix, we also re-spun Bloody Mary as a male character, which worked fine.
    – There are some small parts of the backstory and rules that I felt were internally inconsistent, and dealing with this was a bit time-consuming, it would be good if that could be straightened out. (However none of this actually came up during play.)

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    Makayla M. (verified owner) –

    We had so much fun playing this! I would definitely recommend but our players who were new to murder mysteries did struggle a bit so probably not suitable for beginners.

    Image #1 from Makayla M.
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    Lindsey –

    We hold an annual Murder Mystery Dinner Party and overall we loved Freeform’s murder mystery format. It allows our guest to be dynamic and add their own flavor to their character, and having money and special abilities really made this one to remember. We did learn that you definitely need 2 hosts for A Heroic Death (heed Freeform’s advice!) and we should have marked off “rooms” in our basement. We didn’t do that and that got confusing for the players since certain actions need to be taken in specific “rooms”. Everyone had a great time and we’ve played several of the other FreeForm games over the years.

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    Philip –

    I’ve run about 6 different Freeform Games games and they were all very good, but A Heroic Death is the clear best of the lot. It’s so good in fact, that I’ve run it 3 times. My mostly newbie players have always done great, but I think being a newbie host could be a challenge.

    I had particular fun the last time getting my smart device to play the computer announcements instead of just reading them out.

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    Philip Wilson –

    I recently hosted A Heroic Death for the 3rd time, having previously hosted several of the company’s other games over the years. The reasons I love this game in particular are that its high-stakes superhero storylines and superpowers make it different to the other games I’ve hosted and the murder mystery difficulty is pitched well. This last time I used a smart speaker to make most of the announcements, which worked really well.

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    Lorraine Shaw –

    We had an awesome evening playing A Heroic Death! It was my daughter’s 17th birthday party. This is the 3rd freeform game we’ve played and we love them (we are in Zimbabwe). Such fun for everyone!Click here to see more photos

    Image #1 from Lorraine Shaw
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    Janae Martinez –

    For my husbands 40th birthday, I really wanted to celebrate big. A friend suggested looking at Freeform Games, as she has used you in the past. We are all huge geeks so I knew A Heroic Death was the one for us. I played the HOST and my husband was Captain Amazing! This game was so easy for first-time murder mystery players (and HOST) it all went so smooth and everyone really got into their characters. We played it as Captain Amazing!’s 40th capture of ReptoMan and it worked out so well! We decorated the house with streamers and banners, but had some of them ‘falling down’ as it is the day after a party. I set up a table with name tags and envelopes for each character and they could come to the HOST with any questions before the game started. I had finger foods and food in the crock-pot so people could still eat and move around. We played with all the characters plus 2 extras you can download. I would suggest if you are playing with more than 10 people, and you are not experienced with murder mysteries, to have a HOST’s assistant. I was able to handle it with 14 people, but sometimes the player had to wait until I could help them. No One figured out who the murder was, and only a few ‘side’ missions were figured out. At the end when I revealed everything, everyone was rolling on the floor and playfully calling each other names, I take that as a great sign! This game was so much fun for everyone, and really smooth to play, I will purchase a Freeform game again, in fact, I can’t wait to put another one together!

    Image #1 from Janae Martinez
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    Molly Stedfast –

    We just threw out first Murder Mystery Party here as a birthday shindig! We did A Heroic Death and of course did it very spur of the moment, giving our participants only 2 days notice! Add to that that we did the party on a week/work/school night (we are a mixture of your professionals and graduate students at Virginia Tech). But boy, did our friends come through! We had a former D&D Dungeon Master playing our host and everyone came in full costume!!

    We thoroughly enjoyed the game, the party, and the fellowship! We can’t wait to play another sometime soon, just as soon as our hangovers wear off 🙂

    Thanks so much!

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    Brandon Hicks –

    A Heroic Death played out beautifully! I had a group that went all out. I had to give a little direction near the beginning, but they got the hang of it quickly. We are excited to try another game next month!

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    Brandon Hicks –

    A Heroic Death played out beautifully! I had a group that went all out. I had to give a little direction near the beginning, but they got the hang of it quickly. We are excited to try another game next month!

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    Debbie Ma –

    So glad we picked this story, we definitely got our money’s worth! Everyone had a blast with A Heroic Death and was impressed with all the plot twists, character backstory and abilities. Can’t wait to host another event!

    Image #1 from Debbie Ma
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    Melissa Midcap –

    We love your games, and I actually just used A Heroic Death this past weekend as the final exam for my Spanish 4 students!! It was great! I didn’t have time, of course, to translate all of their packets into Spanish, but they played out the whole evening with no English!! I was so proud of them! Tomorrow they will do the other half of the exam – writing an essay in Spanish about their character and accomplishments (or failures!).

    I did this last year as well with A Dead Man’s Chest. One of my students summed it up after the party as he said, “That was the coolest exam EVER!”

    Kids are already asking me what the theme will be next year, haha!

    Thanks to your writers for a great evening!

    Image #1 from Melissa Midcap
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    Chris Van Staveren –

    Hosted the A Heroic Death (Kids) Murder Mystery game last weekend at our chalet north of Toronto Canada. The temperature outside dropped to an incredible minus 30 Celsius, so it was a perfect time to stay inside (except for the Ice Queen). Our family of 4 hosted 2 other families so we had 6 Adults and 6 kids from the age of 9 to 12. The two invited families had never played a murder mystery game, but I knew they all secretly wanted to be superheroes, so A Heroic Death was perfect. I was pleasantly surprised by the effort they put into costumes by the group. We played the game in about 2.5 hours, and spent over an hour debriefing. Everybody loved it and kept talking about the various characters for hours afterwards, and even the majority of the next day. The newbies are all keen to do another game now that they understand how they work – so we will probably do something in the summer.

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    Chris Van Staveren –

    Hosted the A Heroic Death (Kids) Murder Mystery game last weekend at our chalet north of Toronto Canada. The temperature outside dropped to an incredible minus 30 Celsius, so it was a perfect time to stay inside (except for the Ice Queen). Our family of 4 hosted 2 other families so we had 6 Adults and 6 kids from the age of 9 to 12. The two invited families had never played a murder mystery game, but I knew they all secretly wanted to be superheroes, so A Heroic Death was perfect. I was pleasantly surprised by the effort they put into costumes by the group. We played the game in about 2.5 hours, and spent over an hour debriefing. Everybody loved it and kept talking about the various characters for hours afterwards, and even the majority of the next day. The newbies are all keen to do another game now that they understand how they work – so we will probably do something in the summer.

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    Noémi Überhardt –

    Yesterday was a blast! I just wanted to let you guys know that everyone LOVED A Heroic Death. Everyone was new to the world of murder mystery games so maybe I should have picked an easier plot for an all-first-timer-team but it was fantastic nonetheless!! All the characters arrived in wonderful costumes (all home-made and creative) and even though there was some confusion here and there, it was just superb!! Some characters got a little side-tracked and got so engaged in blackmailing and bargaining that at the end of the game they had no clue whatsoever who the killer might have been. :))) I hadn’t laughed this much in a long time, so thank you!!

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    Andy Jenkinson –

    I hosted A Heroic Death on Friday (my 40th birthday). I think this is the sixth of your games I’ve either hosted or been a guest at over the past seven years. It was interesting to compare to the others I’ve played – Death on the Gambia, Death in the Fast Lane, Casino Fatale, etc – and I applaud your writing/plotting as even now the stories feel different – not just a re-skinning. The superhero characters/archetypes in Heroic Death are very good for fancy dress although practically it is trickier to get a superhero costume than a costume for Casino Fatale (or maybe it’s just that my wardrobe has more formal wear than capes and masks).

    Overall everyone had a great evening, although buffet food was barely eaten – people were far too busy. Most people agreed afterwards that they could have done with a bit (or a lot) longer than the 3 hours we had. If your games were to have a ‘complexity’ rating this is one I would not rate as ‘beginner’ in my opinion. This isn’t a bad thing at all as it means it is suitable for groups who have done games before and are familiar with the basic mechanics. Overall, I was very pleased with A Heroic Death – thanks again for a clever, witty and – most importantly – fun game!

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    Chris Laws –

    Thank you for providing these games! This is the second one I’ve hosted from your site and, as before, everyone had a blast and was wanting to know when the next one would be. I am definitely a repeat customer! I started planning A Heroic Death the moment I heard about it in your email newsletter. The game was VERY well written with some wildly funny superhero cliches (I won’t elaborate in case of spoilers!).

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    Helen (a playtester) –

    A Heroic Death was fantastic – I really enjoyed it! There were snacks etc around but I was far too engrossed in the game! We then spent quite a while chatting about it afterwards. I’d certainly do another one in the future. The dressing up was a fun aspect as well.

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    Peter (a playtester) –

    I really did enjoy the A Heroic Death evening. It was great fun dressing up and getting into the spirit of things – thanks for letting us play test it!

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    Jane (a playtester) –

    Thanks for a very enjoyable game!

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    Colin (a playtester) –

    Have to say A Heroic Death was a great game and I really enjoyed the character. All in all much fun was had, thanks again!

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Q & A

1. Regarding players who are jailed; I realize 9/12 folks must vote to have a player jailed....but it\'s unclear how they are released. I saw \"unless another player frees them\" but how? Must they stay in jail for a certain amount of time? Exactly who is able to release them. Karen asked on 7 November 2024

Hi Karen, thank you for this question! We're sorry that it isn't clear. Anyone else can release the jailed person -- they don't need any item, or to do anything special, to do so. (Others might try to prevent them from doing so of course.) There is no set length of time that they must stay in -- it will just be, until someone lets them out.

The reason it's like this is that, when the superheros drew up their group rules and installed the jail cell, they were expecting that if someone in the group was exposed as a villain, then surely no-one would ever want to free them. Or if someone did feel that the treatment was too harsh, then they would have a reasoned discussion and vote again in 15 minutes. But, in real life, it might not be quite that simple -- as they will possibly find out, during the course of the game. But from your point of view as host, all that matters is that the jailed person will stay there until freed, and anyone can free them at any time.

 Freeform Games answered on 8 November 2024 store manager
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