Murder Mystery Party in Manchester

Kits run from six to twelve players plus a host who does not play, at $39.90 whatever the head count. In a house share, eight is the comfortable number: you deal the six core characters and two supporting ones, print two pages each, and put all the exhibits in folders by act. Hollywood Noir suits a big, loud table. It is a film noir case in a 1950s studio, fifty-six pages, thirty exhibits in three binders, four search tokens per player and a ballot each. The four files are listed on the murder mystery kits page.

Below six players a kit does not work, because the lies stop crossing and somebody has to sit out as host. Four flatmates want the other format: a cooperative case file, no roles, no host, everyone against the documents. Six of the seven play from one to seven investigators, and The Cursed Laboratory plays one to six. For a first evening take The Heist of the Century: seventeen exhibits, five puzzles, one and a half to two hours. The rest of the catalogue is on the detective case files page.

A4, single-sided, 100 percent, and colour only if it is cheap where you print. Nothing in any file depends on a shade, so black and white is a real option rather than a compromise. A case file is short: seventeen pages for The Enigma Code or The Cursed Laboratory, nineteen for The Winter of '74, twenty-four for The Heist of the Century. A kit is heavier, fifty or fifty-six pages, but you only print the notice, the characters you deal and the exhibits. At eight players that is sixteen character pages instead of twenty-four.

The practical constraint in a shared house is usually the table rather than the people. A case file needs surface area, because you spread every exhibit out at once and nothing is sealed. A kitchen table for four with the exhibits laid across it works; a coffee table does not. A kit needs seats for your players plus the host and a corner for private negotiation. If your living room forces everyone to stay seated, say at the start that people can call someone over rather than shouting across the room.

Payment is by card, in US dollars: $39.90 for a kit, $39 for a case file, $49 for The Phantom Affair. Then an email brings a personal code and you download the PDF from the portal. Nothing is shipped, so there is no delivery to wait for. The code waits indefinitely until first used, then stays valid one week from that opening, not from the purchase. That week also covers the hints and the solution, which are not in the printed file: you reach them on the case file portal with the same code.