Murder Mystery Party - Lethal Luau

by University Games

Product Features

• Game for 6 to 8 players
• Includes party planner with recipes and menu by cookbook author Sandra Gluck
• Also includes eight place cards and eight party invitations and envelopes
• Contains six secret clues
• Recommended age from 18 and up

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.8 x 3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0000AGUY6
• Item model number: 33208
• Manufacturer recommended age: 18 years and up
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,707 in Toys & Games (See Top 100 in Toys & Games)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

Everyone's a suspect when murder is on the menu. Aloha and welcome to Hawaii. There is a luau for Chase Diamond to celebrate his birthday. The impromptu party quickly turns to a woeful wake when a Chase is poisoned. Was it a friend or foe who fatally

Product Description

Serve up some excitement! Make your next dinner party memorable by hosting a Hawaiian murder mystery. Your guests will include Holly Day, the vacationing wife of a billionaire, scuba diving instructor Rip Tide and New York fashion model Nadia Seymour, among others. Someone has poisoned a private detective, and there is no shortage of suspects! This mystery dinner party game has everything you need, including printed invitations and placecards, full profiles of all the characters, dialogue for different "scenes" in the mystery and even recipes for an authentic Hawaiian meal! For 6 to 8 players.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

136 of 137 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Murder Party Comparison, January 1, 2005

By 

Ms Thursday - See all my reviews

= Durability:3.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:1.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Murder Mystery Party - Lethal Luau (Toy)

This was my fourth time hosting a murder mystery party and the first time I've used the Bedazzled Murder Mystery series. My first three parties were all from Decipher's How to Host a Murder series. Here are a few differences I noticed.

1) The game barely took 2 hrs to complete as opposed to the 4 hrs we averaged with the other parties.

2) Each round starts with a printed dialog for the characters to read. People who enjoy improv might find this limiting, but a shy crowd appreciates the help.

3) The murderer knows in the first round they've done it. This is ok if your guests are good actors who can keep a secret, but it will change the experience for that guest. In the How to Host a Murder series the murderer has to figure out the mystery along with the other guests.

4) The game is written for a minimum of 6 people with 2 extra characters in case you have more guests. We played with 7. Having an extra, non-suspect, character confused some guests but as hostess I appreciated not having to find an 8th guest.

All in all we had a good time with this game. The theme is easy to setup and everyone can easily find a Hawaiian shirt. If I had known the differences between the game brands I would have planned my party differently, but I will definitely use the Bedazzled Murder Mystery series for parties in the future.

90 of 92 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Murder Mystery!!!, July 19, 2004

By 

Carissa L. Norris - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:3.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Murder Mystery Party - Lethal Luau (Toy)

I bought this Murder Mystery for a church group gathering and it was a blast! The box contained everything we needed for the evening. It has invitations, name plates, a planning guide and character booklets. The planning guide was invaluable to me as hostess and helped with recipes and a schedule of events. You can play the game with a full dinner, a luncheon menu or even with snacks. As far as the guests, they were given invitations that provided costume suggestions and they all came accordingly, which made the evening all the more fun and believable. There is also a CD that you play at different times during the game to help you keep up with what has been revealed about the characters. I will say that I put in some extra work to pull off our party, though you don't have to if you want to do it on a small budget. We went all out with decorations from a local party store, finding some Hawaiian music and I even provided leaflets with Hawaiian on them for the guests to practice the language. Lethal Luau is a good game to center your party around and then imagine what you can do beyond it to provide the atmosphere of the story. We even reenacted the murder at the beginnig!

As to the plot itself, it was excellently done. I hadn't put all the clues together myself, but one of our members came out with the solution exactly. Everyone else agreed and it turned out that through listening closely and paying attention to clues, the murder is one that can be solved.

Everyone had a good, fun time! We enjoyed playing the parts, learning about Hawaii through the characters and CD and most of all playing a game that brought us all together for a good evening with friends.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Murder Mystery Party, Letal Luau, May 6, 2007

By 

D. Fitzgerald "Denise" (Central Coast, California, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Murder Mystery Party - Lethal Luau (Toy)

We hosted a murder mystery dinner party for our daughter's 18th birthday. The luau theme was fun and easy to find props & clothing for ... hawaiian music was also easy to find (iTunes has a large selection). This game took us about 2 1/2 - 3 hours. Three out of seven of us accurately guessed who the murderer was. None of us had ever participated in a mystery dinner game before, and we all enjoyed it. Even though we handed out the character parts w/ clothing suggestions on short-notice, everyone came dressed to fit their part.

This was the first mystery game we've played. It was fun and we'd like to plan more in the future. I agree with what other people have said about the number of players. This game says it's for 6-8 people, but the 7th and 8th player parts don't have lines (other than introducting themselves), so their participation is limited more to listening to others, although they can ad lib their own lines and help w/ interrogating the other suspect characters. I'd suggest that the host/hostess take the 7th & 8th "non-suspect" parts, or give those parts to guests who can't commit to whether or not they'll make it. However,if you have a slightly larger guest list, you could probably create & add more non-suspect parts of your own if you had a couple other people who wanted to ad lib lines and be there to listen, interrogate and scruitinize clues to try to solve the crime.

I loved the recipes & planning guide that came with the game, it was very useful and I will use the recipes again in the future. We used the main "from scratch/self-prepare" dinner menu, but to make it a little simpler & quicker, did sub in some frozen entrees from Trader Joes rather than completely preparing all from scratch (ie the coconut shrimp, orange chicken, and frozen meatballs), but used all the other recipes ... the papaya, avocada, pineapple salad was delicious! Everyone liked the tropical fruit punch so much, I had to make up a 2nd batch ... we went w/ the non-alcoholic version (our guest ages ranged from 17 to 52yrs). The suggested age limit on this particular game is 18+ due to some mild adult content w/in the script ... probably closely equivalent to a PG-13 movie rating though.

NOTE: we didn't realize that we should have passed around the individual clues as they were revealed for people to really analyze and scrutinize them for various things ... be sure everyone gets a chance to really check out the "physcial" clues as they are revealed throughout the game.

Oh yeah, I give this game some credibility for being educational due to how closely you have to pay attn and remember events and things people have done/said in order to figure out who the murderer is. Also, depending on how much you want to research the hawaiian culture, food, music for your prep, it could be even more educational :-)