Games and RPGs to Add Some Mystery to Your Game Night
This week we’re solving mysteries with grandmas, kids, and one of the biggest names in mystery solving himself.
There are a lot of directions your next game night could go in. Your friends can go on an epic adventure through some dungeons and monsters, or explore a haunted house. Or, you can make your game night into a murder mystery evening for you and your friends. If a murder mystery night sounds like your type of fun, these board games and tabletop RPGs will have you asking whodoneit.
1. Bubblegumshoe
Gumshoe is one of the most famous mystery tabletop RPGs out there. And Bubblegumshoe is that same game, but slightly simplified and more kid friendly. On its own, this is a fun game, don’t let it being ‘child friendly’ make you think it’s anything less than a real, full, and fun mystery TTRPG. But if you’re looking to introduce any brand new TTRPG players or younger players who like solving mysteries, Bubblegumshoe will be the perfect game to pull off of the shelf.
2. Brindlewood Bay
For a game that combines cosmic horror with murder mysteries with a cozy vibe. Think Murder She Wrote with a little more Lovecraft. Players are a group of elderly women living in their quaint New England town and getting to the bottom of all of their local occult conspiracies and cult related disappearances.
3. Vaesen
Shifting a little more magical and mythical, Vaesen is a little bit less mystery and a little more “what the heck is happening in the haunted woods around our Nordic town?” It leans a little more into horror than some of the other RPGs and doesn’t have the same cozy feelings and something like Brindlewood Bay. But it’s a very interesting and beautifully stylized game full of all of the monsters and myths you could want. Now figure out what they are and what they want.
4. The Initiative Board Game
Switching gears to board games, The Initiative Game follows four teenagers who find a mysterious game at a yard sale, play it, and discover a strange connection with their own lives. There’s a comic that you need to read along with each stage of the game, making the mystery of the game immersive and cooperative with customizable characters and overlapping storylines.
5. Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective
Sherlock Holmes is the name in mystery solving. And with this game we’re traveling to Baker Street and asking who did it with the main mystery solving man himself. Sherlock Holmes has ten new and immersive mysteries to solve, each expertly crafted to be difficult but not impossible. This is also a cooperative game, meaning that you and your friends will be working together to figure it all out. And sometimes isn’t a cooperative game nice? I like earning a victory lap around my house, too, but every now and again I just want to work with the squad instead of against.
Just so you know BoLS may collect a share of sales from the links on this page if you decide to shop from them.
