Pop-Up Murder Mystery Games at Emerald City Comic Con: Our Recap
It is probably not surprising to hear that we are both huge comic con fans and have been attending conventions for years. So when Emerald City Comic Con in our hometown of Seattle approached us to host pop-up murder mystery games, it was a dream come true after being attendees for over a decade! For us, it was a perfect opportunity to bring our love for hosting murder mystery games to a whole new level. We chose our murder mystery game WANDERSTAR as the featured game for the con. Given the space western vibes, we thought it would be a great fit for Star Wars and Firefly fans out there! By the end of the con, over 500 attendees had joined us spread across 13 murder mystery games for our biggest con presence yet! Here is our epic recap of our experience hosting murder mystery game parties at Emerald City Comic Con.
Our furry coworker Hades does his best to help us set up our murder mystery party games for Emerald City Comic Con!
Before the con, we spent the first part of 2023 preparing our set up. We envisioned a space cantina far in the deep stretches of space where attendees would arrive, receive their character profile, and feel right at home at the “DoubleStar Cantina”. We also added new name tags, lighting, and props to add to the ambiance. We also wrote an additional expansion pack so we could expand the game for more attendees.
New nametags for our murder mystery characters!
Once we were at the con, we set up our space cantina and were ready to go! On our first day we were thrilled when our first game time filled up! After that first game, we knew we had something special, as people kept telling us how much fun they had and how they wanted to play with their own friends! Word apparently got around though, because we got so popular that folks started lining up an hour before each session to play! We then decided to ask attendees to double up, meaning two people would play the same suspect. Eventually we had to ask folks to TRIPLE up on the final days of the convention! This may sound like a disorderly mess waiting to happen, but we had tried this trick before at a different convention. It was surprisingly a hit! Attendees had a lot of fun having a buddy to conspire with! However, we had never hosted a 50 person game before and there were certainly some nerves as the lines kept getting longer and longer! Despite the nerves and the occasional chaotic moment of line management, it really reconfirmed to us how important it is for geeks to have spaces to meet other geeks to play and imagine together.
As the games progressed, it was fun to see attendees embrace their roles and embody their characters. We were having a great time watching everyone solve the mysteries of Lone Rock Port and come up with their own theories as to whodunnit. It was wonderful to see our games, our characters, and our dreams come to life in the convention room. All in all, our experience hosting our pop-up murder mystery parties at Emerald City Comic Con was a blast! We loved meeting convention attendees and felt all the love and support from our friends who helped out and stopped by. We're looking forward to bringing WANDERSTAR to more conventions across the country!
