Our latest murder mystery case file is set in 19th century Surrey – just outside of London. A young man named Lord Samuel Evercroft is murdered in his manor – with 4 potential suspects that could be involved. Every suspect has something to gain, and it’s up to you to discover their secret motives and eventually work out who is behind the crime.
Historical vs Modern Murder Mystery Cases
There are lots of murder mystery dinner games that take place in a haunted manor, but you don’t get many murder mystery case files that do the same. This was our chance to create something epic for our customers that they could spend many hours working on.
All my games so far have used emails, social media posts, etc. as part of the evidence. I wanted to create a story that could only be solved with letters, newspapers and fingerprints. It took ages to complete, but I’m very happy with the final product! – Sherwin Clary (Owner/Writer)
The original plan was to create a game with 3 Objectives. It was supposed to be done in a couple of months – after creating the puzzles that would fit best in this time period. However, the story kept expanding, character motivations changed, and there were more and more questions that needed answering. In the end, the game was twice as long as expected. While it could easily have been split into 2 separate games, we thought our customers might enjoy planning an all-night event around a large mystery.
Historical Accuracy vs Fun Gameplay
The biggest hurdle with historical murder mystery case files is just how accurate you want to be. Initially, fingerprint smudges were made to look just like smudges – with very little to work with. This increased the difficulty, but didn’t make a lot of sense when you think about the various types of printers that are available. It would be very easy for a printer to ruin the game completely by not printing the exact details we need our customers to focus on. In the end, we scrapped the realistic fingerprint smudges and went with clear fingerprints that are printer-friendly.
We came across these sorts of problems multiple times throughout the creative process. Most people expect newspapers from the 1800s to be yellowed with time. This is how they’re displayed in every other game. But if you’re reading that newspaper the day after it was printed it would definitely not be yellowed. In this case, accuracy wins. And also won’t waste your printer ink. All-in-all, our historical murder mystery case Murder at Evercroft Manor was a labour of love that expanded and flourished and almost drove me insane with all the changes I had to make to have it work. I hope you enjoy it!
Murder at Evercroft Manor is Available Now!
- 4 Interrogations
- 16 Pieces of Evidence
- 7 Objectives to Complete
- 34 Optional Clues (if you get stuck)
