Customer Reviews

Murder Mystery Party - Lethal Luau

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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 :-)

I really enjoyed this game. The most entertaining part about it was to see my friends act out the parts. THe costume's were easy and fun! We opted not to include the 2 extra characters as they don't say anything so it had no point. The CD was boring, but I can see how other reviewers like it- it updated you so you would remember what you've learned in the game thusfar. It was also very unrealistic how each character had a clue "I just happen to have this death certificate in my purse", but overall good fun, and I plan on buying another version in the series-maybe "staying alive".

I was very confused when I read all the reviews stating that this game had only 6 main characters. Apparently, this game was released twice and the newer version, the one I purchased, has 8 characters. They all have speaking parts and all could possibly be the murderer. This was so easy to decorate for and dress up for. Who doesn't love a luau? The only thing I recommend is maybe having a course of dinner in between the sections so you can look over your lines and accusations. The accusations and responses are not written for you to repeat word for word like the lines are, so it can get a little confusing. We stumbled through the first section, but as the game progressed we all got into our characters. It was an amazing way to spend an evening, but no one correctly guessed who the murderer was. I would definately reccomend this game!

This was a fun play to do on our snowy night. You can have a blast decorating in the luau theme. I must say I was really disappointed in the parts for the 2 extra guests. I knew they wouldn't be suspects, but I wasn't aware they didn't even have any lines! If you do this, keep it to six. I also enjoyed A Taste of Wine and Murder much more than this one. The kit did include everything and I liked the idea of placecards for the characters at the dinner table. You can also order some Chinese Food - we did the sweet & sour - which seemed to have the luau theme in case you don't want to cook.

I LOVE murder mysteries, but this listing needs to be updated to reflect that the game is for 8 players now, not 6-8.

I have done several murder mysteries from this company before, and they used to have 6 main characters and 2 optional. The 2 optional characters were always really lame, so I'm guessing the makers responded to customer feedback and revised their games to integrate all 8 players. I think that's WONDERFUL!

That said, I bought this game to play with 6 people, based on the product description. I know I'll end up using this one eventually, so I didn't return it, but it was frustrating to get the package and find out it was useless for my upcoming party. I ended up buying and downloading a party for 6 online.

This is the first mystery game I've done in a LONG time (15 years?) and all the guests agreed it was fun to play. As the host, I appreciated the detailed instructions for party planning. Other reviewers said it took them less than 2 hours to play, but it was closer to 3 1/2 for our party. It was a little unclear how to ask the questions so we fumbled with that for a bit. That is probably what took us longer. We also noticed that a couple of the character books had errors. Example: one character thought she was supposed to read a certain statement from the dialogue but the rest of us had books that said a different character was supposed to read that part. The errors weren't a big deal, though, and didn't effect the outcome of the game. I was also under the impression that this game was "cleaner" than others. Maybe it is relative, but accusations of infidelity, men wearing women's underwear, and other such took some of the guests by surprise.
Since most of the guests had never participated in a party like this and for the others, it had been a long time, we appreciated the scripted format of the game. Next time, I'd like to try the unscripted type.

This was our first murder mystery game we have done. It was a blast. I will be doing more in the future. I recommend this one for anyone wanting a fun night. We did it with our teenagers for a birthday party.

I have played several murder mystery parties. They are loads of fun!!! This one was really fun, but not as good as some others that I have played. The menu was really good... which I didn't have in any of the other games I've purchased. This one was less expensive, which was nice. In the reviews people said that 2 of the players didn't have a part and it wasn't fun for them, but I can't figure out what they are talking about... I still don't know which were the extra two characters and I played the game! They all seemed like equal parts to me. It was good fun and you wouldn't go wrong to purchase this one. We all liked it.