We love both mysteries and board games in our house (and we’re notoriously hard to buy for), so friends and family kept gifting us mystery board games (many of them, monthly subscriptions) for holidays and birthdays. Add my Kickstarter habit into the mix, plus the fact that we usually saved robust mystery board games for special occasions (like a birthday or vacation activity), our stockpile started to overwhelm us. So a couple of years ago, we decided to make “mystery” a weekly habit.
Our weekly habit
Enter: Mystery Monday
Every week, we celebrate Mystery Monday by seeking out and enjoying a variety of mystery forms, including our favorite: mystery board games. We usually make a date night of it and order some sort of dinner delivery.
Of course, I use the term “mystery board games” loosely, because many of these mysteries don’t have a traditional board. Murder mysteries at home, and board games in general, have come a long way since the days of Clue. Tabletop mystery games might be a better description, but I’ll stick with the more commonplace term that doesn’t remind most people of RPGs like D&D. There’s a huge variety of mystery board games available at the moment, not to mention hundreds of video games. Whatever type of mystery you like, I’m confident you can find enough to fill a monthly or weekly mystery night.
Mystery board games
Sometimes, we dig into a meaty mystery like a Hunt-A-Killer or Detective Society box set or a standalone box from Deadbolt Mystery Society. Since we only have so much brain power on a Monday evening, and many of the puzzles take time to pick apart, these can take several weeks to finish.
If we’re looking to finish a mystery in a single sitting, we might play an episode of Chronicles of Crime. When my brother stayed with us for a few weeks last spring, we enjoyed working through the entire interconnected, 4-case Chronicles of Crime: Welcome to Redview expansion.
For those feisty, competitive moods, or when we’re filling time before dinner arrives, we’ll pull out competitive mystery board games like Awkward Guests. It’s just similar enough to Clue to tickle the nostalgia centers of the brain, but modernized to be nuanced and complex enough to earn its place among our favorite Kickstarter-backed games.
For those truly special occasions, like birthdays or staycations, we reserve the deep mystery adventures like the amazing Wilson Wolfe Affair. But we don’t necessarily commit to finishing one mystery board game before moving on to the next, especially when we’re working on these long-term games. When we’re feeling on top of our game (pun only slightly intended), we progress our biggest cases. If we’re looking for a lighter-weight challenge, we might sprinkle in an Undo box or a few MicroMacro: Crime City cases.
Mystery video games
Sometimes, we’re up for solving puzzles, but simply need a more comfortable place to sit than our dining table. We haven’t yet solved the “dining room chairs aren’t made for long-term sitting” problem.
When we still want a more hands-on mystery, but want to avoid needing a tabletop, we choose a mystery video game. It can be difficult to sift through the options and avoid rudimentary hidden object games, but between digging up classics like Deja Vu and the popularity of mystery point-and-click games on Kickstarter, game developers continue to feed the pool of options.
And since my husband is a science fiction & fantasy author, we’re especially excited when we can find a great scifi/fantasy mystery video game. Two of our recent favorites (both crowdfunded on Kickstarter) are Truberbrook or Thimbleweed Park. If you’re also a scifi fan, or simply love when a mystery involves a weird little town, I highly recommend both. As an added bonus, if you remember (and loved) LucasArts’ Maniac Mansion, the same creators made Thimbleweed Park.
Our most reliable video game setup involves either playing games on our Nintendo Switch or streaming from my laptop to the Steam App on our Android-based TV. It might take a little work (or a really long HDMI cable) if you have an older TV, but the comfort of sitting on the couch and projecting to the TV so everyone can participate in solving the game puzzles is worth the research.
Mystery tv shows and movies
But what about those days when we just don’t feel like a sleuth, mystery board games just take too much out of us, and even point-and-click video game puzzles require more brain power than we have available?
If a long or stressful day fried our brains, or when we’ve solved all the puzzles we can manage from our active mystery, we’ll settle in for a mystery show or movie. Whether it’s a classic like an episode of Murder, She Wrote or Dial M for Murder, or a modern gem like Only Murders in the Building or Knives Out, we try to honor our weekly date night with some kind of mystery.
Make your own mystery habit
Making a habit of “mystery” is like any other positive habit: it won’t happen by accident. Here are some tips to make it easier.
Put it on the calendar
Whether you choose to make a weekly habit, or simply give a mystery theme to one phase of a larger habit—like designating your first weekly “date night” or “family night” of the month as “mystery week”—put it on the calendar and send invitations to everyone. If you need to miss one, reschedule it.
Make a list
Create a list of mysteries you want to play, watch, or read. As each mystery night draws closer, choose which items from your queue you do next together.
Budget your splurges
If you’re on a tight budget, use your mystery queue and plan for your next mystery night when considering your monthly entertainment budget. Use your existing subscriptions wisely. Save up an Audible credit for a book you all want to listen to. Choose movies you can find in your streaming services. Don’t have a streaming service with a movie or show you want? Invite a friend with that service to join your mystery night. Have someone asking what to buy you, your spouse, or your kids for a birthday? Create an Amazon wish list of mystery board games you want to play, or ask someone to gift your next video game on steam.
Give back
While some mystery games—like Awkward Guests—are replayable, other more story-based mystery games with a concrete solution—like Undo—lose their challenge once you’ve solved them. Once you finish your single-use mystery board games, pay it forward to another mystery lover. Donate it to a local game cafe, or regift it to a friend.
So whether you prefer Mystery Monday, Whodunit Wednesday, Forensics Friday, Sleuth Sunday, or choose to avoid alliteration altogether (*gasp*!), creating a weekly mystery habit can be a great activity for families or couples.
