What Happened in Vegas - Murder Mystery Box

Inspectors' Review:

• An itty bitty box!

• If I fit, I sits!

• Envelopes are tasty!

• Don't tell mum I took a nibble...

• This book smells good! Can I eat this, too?

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Boss' Review:

Murder Mystery Box is a quarterly subscription company that provides murder mysteries that are self contained in their boxes. This means they require no additional research, no googling, and no websites, which makes them quite portable if you plan on traveling to places with no internet access. The set up (keeping in mind I am basing this off one game) was a journal written by a character who narrates the investigation. As they progress you are directed to open evidence envelopes that provide clues as well as suspect cards to help you eliminate (and add) as you go. The game will stop you in the journal before the ending is concluded to give you a chance to assess your notes and the evidence before seeing if your chosen suspect was the correct one.

This game starts with the character, Tyson Merrick traveling to Vegas for a job interview and quickly becomes embroiled in a three person murder where he is one of the suspects. The detective involved has Tyson tag along in the investigation as Tyson has a curious connection to all the victims. Now, the story was easy to follow, short, and to the point. I do find the fact a murder suspect was brought to other suspects’ interviews by the detective to be odd and a potential plot hole that took me out of the immersion but I did like the idea of the unreliable narrator with having one of the suspects as the point of view. I wish they would have played more into this idea as the narrative was very concise and didn’t allow for a lot of interpretation.

In terms of puzzles this game only requires deduction – I personally found the majority of characters were easy to eliminate quite quickly without much more than cursory work. I did like how they set up one suspect as a nice way to lift the narrative. I did find the deduction lacked any examination into the motive of the connection between all the murders, though. It felt like a file dump at the end when they fully explored the real motives connecting the deaths. I assume it was to have us focus on each suspects relationship to specific victims (a kind of misdirect) but in the end I wish there was more evidence unpacking that for me or giving me clues to follow that path. I wanted to discover the motive myself. I found the deduction okay but I wasn’t wowed. I wrote down no information and was able to solve pretty quickly. In this frame, it is easy level of deduction which would be great for beginnings, families, and younger detectives.

I have no customer service review for this company because I did get this game second hand. I will say the packaging was good. Though, this game is all paper and I found the box was unnecessary (my cats loved it XD) as everything could fit into an oversized envelope.

Overall, What Happened in Vegas is a very light murder mystery novella experience with interesting evidence to build immersive. The story was well organized (though there was the one plot hole), and the deduction was super light which is great for new detectives more than experienced ones. This experience took me about 30-45 minutes and retail for this game is around $30.00 USD.

If you are interested in checking out more of their games, they do offer one box experiences in addition their quarterly subscription so check it out here.