Foul Play; Murder Mystery Card Game | #Review #FoulPlay #MurderMysteryCardGame #damppebblesblogtours | @damppebbles @afterdarkmurder

Hello, Sunshines, I have something very different for you today, I have a review of a completely different kind, not a book, but a card game. I have the huge pleasure to be apart of the blog tour for Foul Play which is a brilliant new Murder Mystery Card Game brought to us by After Dark. I can’t wait to share my thoughts of this game with you all, firstly I want to say thank you to Emma at Damppebbles for the invite to this tour and to After Dark for the complimentary pack on Foul Play. Now, let the game begin……

The History!

What’s a Murder Mystery Events Company to do?

With a pandemic sweeping the nation and no sign of being able to perform their confounding criminal cabarets or incredible interactive investigations any time soon, they needed to come up with a plan, another way to provide mystery to the masses (and provide income to keep themselves afloat)!

Well, lockdown does strange things to people, especially actors who can’t go out and perform. So one fateful evening, Ben & Lee Cooper-Muir decided to come up with a whole new way to murder people. Keeping their cards close to their chests they plotted and schemed until Foul Play : The Murder Mystery Card Game was born. So, what to do next? This is where After Dark enters the picture. After all, Ben and Lee were two of the operators of the infamous murder mystery company. Maybe they could collaborate to bring the game to the masses. When Lockdown restrictions were eased a top-secret meeting was held with the other criminal masterminds behind After Dark, Helen Burrows, Sophie Webster & Tom Fisher and a pact was made. The game would be launched and licensed under the After Dark banner. In true After Dark style, the team burst into action and then began the beta testing, design updates, promotional planning, character changes, proofing, proofing and more proofing until finally all the kinks were ironed out, mysteries solved, and FOUL PLAY came to life!

We hope you enjoy playing it, and although we all hope to be back performing soon, WATCH THIS SPACE! Now we know we can create and produce games we’ve got a lot more fun things planned for the future!

Foul Play; The Game!

Welcome to Edwardian England. The Lord of the Manor is dead! The servants are our lead suspects and it’s up to you to unearth the evidence, seek out the suspects and catch the culprit in order to scupper the other sleuths, and win this game of murder!

There’s more than one way to catch a killer though. So what’s it gonna be? Good Cop or Bad Cop? These two game versions come with their own set of rules and tactics to crack the case and finger your suspect, but will you use fair play or FOUL PLAY?

The Game is Afoot! Playing as detective, you’ll need to find the three evidence cards that point to a specific suspect in order to catch a killer in this crazy criminal caper. Will you uncover them in the crime scene? Could the other detectives be willing to collaborate and share their findings? Or will you resort to more tricky tactics, and plunder the proof you need to solve this crime?

Review

Close the curtain’s, lock the door and turn off the TV…plus make sure you have lots of snacks at the ready (even if only to distract the other players with rustling wrappers…*evil grin* ) and your ready to step into the shoes of Poirot or Miss Marple as those little grey cells set to working

Me and the family aren’t usually a card playing family, only because certain members cheat – tut, tut, tut!! 😉 But, all three of us were really excited about having a go at Foul Play, it’s something we haven’t seen before and it ended up in a hilarious weekend and you soon find out who the sneaky players are (even though I’m sure the family would say that was me).

Me and the family thoroughly enjoyed it, we started with the ‘easier’ Good Cop game, which I think is the best way to start. Once you have a few games under your belt and you get the overall idea of the game, the rules and the cards then do have a go at Bad Cop which is easily my favourite and where you can be very sneaky 😉

The game is a little difficult to get your head around at first, and it is a case of practice makes perfect, but it’s all good fun, there was loads of laughs. The rules of both Bad Cop and Good Cop, plus how to play’ each card are all in the box, I would say that the rules do need to be a little bigger as both my parents have eye-sight issues and they had difficulty reading the tiny printed cards. So, just a heads up you may need to do what we did and get the magnifying glass out.

I have to talk about the cards themselves, each one especially the ‘Suspect’s’ are beautifully made and the attention to detail is fabulous; I particularly love Cillian, with his rose Tattoo (people who know me, won’t find that as a surprise). They have a really good quality feel to them and I liked the glossiness of them too.

This is ingenious, it’s brilliant fun for all the family, it is hours of fun, plus good natured bickering 😉 and absolutely perfect for the these colder nights. Do be warned, once the crime scene is set and the cards have been dealt you won’t be able to stop playing, it’s addictive and great fun!