Murder Mystery

School Reunion Murder Mystery Party Game

★ MURDER AT COLDHARBOUR — a 1994 school reunion whodunit for 4-12 players ★

Get it on Etsy → Instant digital download · print at home

Coldharbour is a minor public school in Shropshire with a lake at the bottom of the playing fields and a boathouse on it. In August 1974 that boathouse burned in the night with a boy inside, the coroner recorded an accident, and the school moved on the way schools do. Twenty years later the class of 1974 came back for a dinner in the hall — forty-one of them, a marquee, a photograph on the steps, and one woman nobody had invited. At half past eleven a man was found on the boathouse slipway under the winch cable off the boat trailer.

🎭 THE TWIST THIS ONE IS BUILT ON

Every person at that reunion knew exactly who he was. Every one of them was wrong. Your guests will work out who killed him long before they work out who he was — and until they have the second answer the first one will not stand up. This is not a whodunit with an identity attached. It is an identity mystery that happens to have a body in it.

🖼 FULLY ILLUSTRATED — NEW EDITION

• 12 painted character portraits, one on every character sheet

• A "Meet Your Characters" page so your guests can see the whole year group at a glance

• A painted cover of the slipway as it was found

Nobody hands out a plain sheet of text any more. Your guests get a face to play.

👤 12 CHARACTERS, EACH WITH A REAL SECRET

The 6 at the centre carry the mystery — the wife who was eighteen the summer of the fire, the sister of the boy who died who has written to this school twice a year for twenty years and never once had a reply, the housemaster who was told what to put in the fire report and by whom, the solicitor who noticed in 1978 that a signature did not match a school document from 1973, the man who found the fire and has known since that night that the first sentence of the report is wrong, and the business partner who found eighty thousand pounds missing in April and has told nobody.

6 more of the class of 1974 each get a full sheet of their own: a motive, an alibi, something they saw, and a reason to be nervous. Nobody at your table just watches.

📄 WHAT YOU GET — instant download, 23 pages

• Host Guide — how to run all three rounds

• At a Glance — the whole game on one page, safe to read even if you are playing

• The Tangle — who is covering for whom (host only)

• The Story — read aloud to open the night

• Meet Your Characters — the illustrated cast

• 12 Character Sheets — secret, alibi, what you know, and what to say in Round 3

• Clue Cards for all three rounds

• Accusation Sheets and printable invitations

• The Murderer’s Envelope — hand it to one guest, or leave it sealed and play along yourself

• The Solution — sealed at the back, read aloud at the end

🖨 HOW IT WORKS

1. Print. A4 and US Letter are both included — print at 100% on plain paper.

2. Hand out. One character sheet per guest. At 4 players you use the core 6; at 12 you hand out every sheet in the file.

3. Play. Three rounds, roughly 90-120 minutes. Clue cards go out at the top of each round.

4. Accuse. Everyone fills in an Accusation Sheet. Read the Solution page aloud — whoever names the murderer, the method AND the motive wins.

You can host AND play. No character sheet tells its owner they are the killer, so read your own and leave the last two pages — the Murderer’s Envelope and the Solution — in an envelope until the vote.