Customer Reviews

Kit's Mystery Party Game (American Girl Collection)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

We used this for our daughter's 8th birthday party. Every one of the kids I asked liked it and a couple yelled, "That was fun!" at the end. It got them thinking and didn't have them sitting for the whole time. It was set during the 1930's during the Depression. The mother can't find her pearl necklace and each person is a suspect. The girls work together to solve the mystery. There are even signs and clues you post up and leave around the house to facilitate the game. The game includes: invitations and envelopes to send to each person coming with a description of that character and how they may dress, scripts for each character, name tags, a pearl necklace card (we used a faux pearl necklace), the clues, the "hobo" signs the adult posts up.
I mistakenly assumed that the parts would be for all girls and looked online to find out if that was the case. I couldn't find that in the item description on Amazon or the AG site. There were 2 boy characters in the game. I prepped the girls for this and a couple volunteered to be the boys (just to be nice). This wasn't a big issue for me though. I think it's good for kids to learn to be flexible and encourage them to look at it as a challenge to be a great actress.
The one flaw the game had was that one character wasn't with the group for most of the game. I had this character be offstage close to the rest of the kids (as the game suggested) but I could tell she still felt excluded since she didn't get to go on the hunt looking for the clues. If I could do it over again, I would be that character (a homeless boy) and have a very mature girl be the mother (the game suggests an adult be the mother to keep the flow going).
Plan to read this a few weeks before using it so you have time to send out the invites and get everything ready.

The game was well written and fun for the girls. I played the adult role to move things along. The costume suggestions were easy to do and really added to the fun for the party. My only complaint was the game went much faster than suggested on the box. We were finished in 30 minutes instead of one hour! The girls that participated were 9-10 year olds. They wished it were longer as well or had a second mystery to solve.

This is cute. As a previous reviewer posted, one flaw is that one character is off-stage for a good deal of the script. Not so fun for most girls. Also, this is not the best game to choose if your daughter MUST invite a large crowd. THere are roles for 8 girls. If you have 16 girls and have them share a role it ends up being very little speaking. You can "create" roles, but then what about lines? Not much flexibility there unless you rewrite the entire script. Lastly, please remember your target audience. In order for this play to flow well, girls need to be strong readers. Many 6 year olds are big fans of the AG world and you might have a daughter who is a very strong reader but the chances of 7 of her friends that age being strong readers as well are low. By age 8 or 9 most kids are reading well enough to read new material smoothly with appropriate inflection/expression, understanding the story as they read it.

I wanted something different for my daughter's 9th birthday party and I knew I wanted it to have a mystery theme. We didn't want anything that involved murder. I just happened across this here on Amazon. I was nervous... especially since I don't know anyone who had used it.

But let me tell you - IT WAS GREAT!!! The kids LOVED it! Several said it was the best party that they had ever been to. Some even came in costume.

I recommend this to EVERYONE.... So much fun & has great values.

I can't wait to try the other 2 party games!!!

Great game, included everything we needed, not complicated.
The kids had SO much fun dressing up and acting out their characters.

This was a very nice party game. We had a lot of fun with it. I would love to reuse it. It would be nice if you could buy duplicate invitations to go along with it.

We ordered Kit's Mystery Game for my daughter's birthday party. It arrived with key pieces MISSING!! There are no Character Cards in the box. No name tags in the box! No invitations in the box. 50% of what was advertised is NOT in this box!!! We will have to "make up" our own mystery items. We regret ordering this and we have one very disappointed birthday girl and birthday group!!!!!!!!