A private party at a gin joint in 1949 will be the scene for a murder in Wednesday night’s Hardboiled Murder Mystery at Cardinal Spirits.
In this game by Mid by Midwest Murder Mysteries, participants will play characters, dress in costumes and work in teams to figure out which one of them is the murderer.
Mid by Midwest owner Josh Johnson said his first step in writing murder mysteries is to find a time period and theme.
“We’ll take a year, and we’ll take a focus that works off cultural tropes,” he said.
This mystery features elements of the film noir genre such as femmes fatales, detectives and double-crossing, Johnson said.
The time periods and themes in some of his previous murder mysteries involve settings like a glamorous Las Vegas in the early 1960s and the Prohibition Era in the 1920s.
Christopher De Young, who will be attending the event, has participated in many murder mysteries by Mid by Midwest.
“Josh does such as good job of evoking a time and a place,” De Young said. “It really helps people get into character.”
Participants will receive their own character sheet and will be split into teams where they will use the clues they are given and clues they learn from others to figure out the identity of the murderer and their motive. The game has three rounds, and at the end each team will pick a spokesperson to say who they think is the murderer. When the truth is revealed, the winning team will receive prizes.
Johnson said he started the murder mystery business with his wife, Stephanie Johnson. He said the idea of creating these games came when they played murder mysteries with friends and thought of ways to improve the games and make them more interesting.
One of the major differences between his murder mysteries and many games in the genre is the emphasis on playing in teams, he said.
This makes the murder mystery feel more like a cocktail party, he said.
Playing on teams can also bring out the strengths of different personality types and allows everyone to have a good time, Johnson said.
“When everyone is on their own, that plays more to really extroverted people,” he said. “There are a lot of people that get really into playing a part, but there are also people that are into more of the problem-solving part.”
This means individuals do not have to do everything on their own, and they can participate in different facets of the game, he said.
Johnson said they also wanted to make the game more interactive, so players can talk to other characters to learn information and help their team solve the mystery.
The murder mysteries are a social experience, De Young said.
“Most of the time is spent meeting one another, talking to people as you’re eating and drinking, all the while trying to get clues from them without letting too much of what you know slip out,” he said.
Other games are often more like a play where certain characters only have a small part or people are simply reading off a script, Johnson said.
“It still has the role-playing part, it still has the clues and problem-solving, but it also makes it a little more of a game for the players as opposed to just reading off lines or watching other people do it,” Johnson said.
The murder mystery will be located in the distillery section of Cardinal Spirits.
“It makes for a unique and fun atmosphere, especially doing this one, which is set in a gin joint,” he said.
The murder mystery also has an hors d’oeuvres buffet, Cardinal Spirits specialty cocktails and prizes.
Mid by Midwest will have another murder mystery event Oct. 10 at Scholars Inn Gourmet Café & Wine Bar.
Johnson’s favorite part about creating murder mysteries is expanding on small idea, he said. He will research a time period or interest and eventually end up with an entire story.
“As I research, there’s more things to follow and to learn about, and it becomes this huge plot around one little interest,” Johnson said. “It’s really neat to see that unfold.”
De Young says murder mysteries allow him to escape reality.
“I think it’s easy for us to get into a rut, doing the same things and going to the same places,” he said. “These murder mysteries help me break out of my everyday life for a bit and allow me to try on a different character.”
