Poe's Raven Party: Gothic Murder Mystery Party Game

What an amazing service! This is planned out from start to finish with easy to follow directions and prompts. It is editable, which was wonderful for our daughter's 17th birthday party as she wanted to change the names. The kids are going to have a BLAST with this and are SUPER excited to have a reason besides Halloween to get dressed up in romance literature costumes and pretend to be other people as they are ALL in theater! I will HIGHLY recommend this service to ANYONE and EVERYONE! We only purchased the online version but the addons and the physical game look fun as well!

My group of friends deeply enjoyed this game. It kept everyone guessing with an unexpected plot twist!

My Edgar Allen Poe, Agatha Christie, Knives Out loving 15yo son chose this mystery for his 15th birthday party with a co-ed group of kids, ages 12-17. The kids were friends from 3 different places, and one of them didn't know anyone else. My husband and I were nervous and hopeful that forcing them to socialize with a purpose would lead to a fun party, and it did. My son is already planning on having another murder mystery next year, and his younger brother wants to throw one for his birthday in the summer.

During the final round, the kids were discussing and changing their responses in a very cooperative fashion, so 8/12 got it right. If you have a more competitive group, your number of correct answers will probably be lower.

I don't have any complaints. The setup took maybe an hour or so for reading, printing, cutting, and prepping envelopes. We did minimal decorations (black tablecloths, some skulls, candles, cobwebs, and black gauze--all repurposed or bought on post-Halloween clearance), non-themed food, and clothing we had on hand. We played the Knives Out and Glass Onion soundtracks in the background, which the kids mentioned added to the mood. It was very affordable, easy to host, and so much fun. Highly recommend!

I wanted to do something different for my birthday this year and My Mystery Party most certainly delivered! My theme was death to my 20's and adding the murder mystery on to this was perfect!
The pack you receive explains everything clearly, gave me the flexibility to design my information pack the way I wanted and the plot twist was very unexpected!
I would purchase again, i might do one for xmas this year too because we had so much fun!!!

Was so much fun with both 1920s we had to try another mystery

I hosted this game for my 30th birthday. Overall it was fun, and I don't regret the choice. As it was not the only event of the day, we played the shortest version: no pre-games, no money challenge, no bonus games. For almost all the guests this was their first murder mystery.

What we loved:
1. The host can play the game. I did ask my non-playing friends to help cut the clues and put them into envelopes, but it was straight-forward after that. The instructions are clear and detailed, and the example timeline is very helpful. The only spoiler is who is required: but you can avoid it, if you ask your non-playing friends to pick which optional characters will be dropped.
2. All the gossip. Average people aren't great actors, but the talking points provided to the characters made it easy to act your role, talk to others, stir drama, and all that fun stuff. It also makes you excited to hear the solutions and how it all ties together, even if you don't get the answer right.
3. The victims die in the game, not off-screen, which is definitely more exciting.
4. The game mechanics: the game is non-cooperative (everyone gets a guess at the murderer), the murderer doesn't know who they are, and the guests are supposed to mingle in 1-1 conversations. This creates a smooth flow of information and a good balance between sharing others' secrets, but keeping some of your ideas to yourself.
5. Awesome and fast customer service, very helpful recommendations!

What we didn't love that much:
1. The reveal. About 25% of our group guessed the murderer. However, the motive seemed a bit thin, and the way the murder was committed - a bit random, compared to some of the versions the players made up during the accusation round.
2. The evidence. The forensic report was quite short and simply listed some names of guests linked to parts of the crime scene. There were no middle steps to figure out, f.ex. who could have left a particular trace. The separation of the game space into 2 rooms didn't have much effect on the game either.
3. Information incompleteness. Several times in the game we've encountered that character A knows a fact about character B, but character B doesn't know it about themselves. That can make it hard to react to things: you don't know if something is a false rumor that you should contemptuously deny, or if it just wasn't mentioned on your clue card.
4. Optional characters. Why, oh why is the guest list sorted according to optionality? I shuffled it to be alphabetical instead, so it was less obvious. But still, in the first round many guests caught on to who was optional: those charaters had a lot fewer details and less stuff to discuss.
5. The aesthetics. Parts of the game have great design choices: the guest list, name badges, the victim sign and the pinterest board are very nice. We didn't decorate much, but the game atmosphere allowed for some beautiful decoration options. However, the introduction video and the rule video, made of assorted mismatching stock video clips, mediocre animation, and amateur voiceover, were a lot less impressive and took you out of the mood; so did the weirdly sexualized pictures from a custome shop, embedded in the pre-game webpage. I also had to rewrite the guest list a little to make the descriptions easier to read and less over the top, but mostly because we're not native English speakers.

We had a great murder mystery party!

We used this theme for my daughters 17th birthday party. We had 18 kids participate and everyone had so much fun. They dressed up and played their parts wonderfully. At the end of the night most were asking when we would be hosting the next one!

We had 25 people participate and get SO into this murder mystery at our Halloween party this weekend. Everyone had a blast & got so much energy from playing. We didn’t have folks dress for their characters, they were assigned as they walked in, but it still worked wonderfully. A strong emcee helped guide the mystery and another helped plant the costume cards stealthily. Getting rave reviews still from people!

We ordered this game for my husband's 40th birthday party. It was so much freakin fun. We invited 17 guests and it turned out perfect. The timeline provided in the game was the perfect amount of time to play out the event. I wanted to be part of the game so I didn't read everything for the third round so assigning the 2nd victim was a little confusing but still turned out great! We served cornished hens "ravens" for our meal so it was a great addition to the party. Although if you're pressed for time cook something quick that can be easily dished up and served. Make sure to leave time between the 2nd and 3rd rounds to let your guests guess whodunit before passing out the Round 3 cards. You are assured to have a blast!

Had 14 people for a party and this kit made it easy and smooth. Everyone had a great time and we will be talking about this for a while. Can’t wait to try another game.

This was our 3rd murder mystery party and we all enjoyed it very much. Characters were great, story line was easy to follow only the result was a bit confusing since the murderer did not really have a motive for the 2nd murder. But it did not upset us. So nobody was actually getting it right. Oh well, it was still fun playing it.

It was the first time I was hosting a murder mystery party and because I knew a lot of the guests were really into this kind of topics I choose to go for a more difficult level. We used all 18 players and it took us around 3.5 hrs for the 3 rounds (we didnt use any of the bonus activities). I had no idea about the killer nor the victims so it was fun to play along, although it was also a bit hard being the hostess since you are also trying to get everyone drinks and food in the meantime...nevertheless, possible. I didnt want to ruin any of the surprises so I asked a non-attending friend to look into the solution key to write down the second victims name and I would just look at it when it was time....she didnt look properly and gave me the name of the killer....which was very funny because it threw everyone off ...however, it didnt affect the end result as everyone had guessed differently...it was a lot of fun!

We used the Raven Party as part of our dinner networking event for our management development program. Everyone absolutely loved it and got into and stayed in character the whole time. It was an excellent way for people to further their connections at work and have fun at the same time.