How to Run a Murder Mystery for a Remote Team on a Video Call

The Tenth Winter, a murder mystery party game for 8 to 20 players from Cold Ledger Games, is out today, Monday, October 19, as a printable and a digital edition. The digital edition is the one for a remote team: the game runs on everyone's phone while the team talks on an ordinary video call. The Hundredth Episode, the Cold Ledger party game already out, works the same way.

This is how to run either one for a team's year-end party or holiday event. If you are still choosing between a murder mystery, an escape room, trivia and a game night, our office-party comparison weighs them first.

What does a remote team need?

A video call, a phone for each player, and one purchase: the host buys the digital edition and gets a host page, and nobody else buys or installs anything: the game opens in any current browser. Any video call works if it can stay open for the whole evening (a free Zoom meeting ends at 40 minutes), because the game never goes through the call: the call carries the talking, and the phones carry the game. Put the call on a laptop and the game on a phone.

How do players join?

Start a room from your host page whenever you like; it keeps for sixty days. Send the join link, or read out the room's eight-character code. The host page can also copy the game's invitation with the link in it, for a calendar invite. Each player opens the link and gives the name the team knows them by.

Then cast them: characters 1 to 8 are required, and 9 to 20 join in number order. From then on each player's phone holds their character's private guide: secrets, three objectives and a one-line costume, which on a call only has to work from the shoulders up. Cast everyone ahead of time, so there is time to read.

Once everyone is in, close the room's door, so a forwarded link lets nobody new in. If a phone dies on the night, the host page sends that player a fresh link to the same seat.

What runs on the night?

On the full evening the host's phone steps the room through it, and every phone follows. For The Tenth Winter: the toast; sealed cards to the eight main characters' phones, read in private; the statements, read aloud in character order; three waves of evidence; accusations; a secret vote the room counts for you; and the reveal on every screen at once, read aloud by the host. The Hundredth Episode adds a real minute when every phone goes dark together.

On a call, nobody has to share a screen. Each wave of documents opens on every player's phone at once (in the 90-minute format the shared evidence goes out ahead and the rest arrives on the night), so the colleague at home reads the same page as the one in the office, and nobody reads ahead. When the host calls a character to speak, every phone shows whose turn it is and who is playing them, which helps when twenty people are small squares on a screen.

The host plays too. Each game ships four complete sealed versions, and a new room picks one without showing you which, so you play a character as blind as your guests and, unless your own sealed card says you did it, learn the answer at the reveal with everyone else (Four Killers in One Box explains the blind pick). Otherwise the host's job is a tap to open the next phase.

How do you fit it into 90 minutes?

For a work event with a hard stop, both games have a 90-minute format; in the digital edition you pick it when you start the room. Nothing is cut from the mystery; the reading moves to before the night. Before the night, every player reads their character guide and the shared evidence, and The Tenth Winter's is about half an hour of reading. It is identical in every version of the game, so reading it early tells nobody who did it.

In the digital edition the shared evidence is on each player's phone from the moment they are cast, and the room calls both required reading. Say "required" in your own message too: a team that has read spends its ninety minutes arguing, and a team that has not spends them catching up.

How do you run it for a big team?

For a big group, up to twenty, The Tenth Winter's host materials add two ways to compete.

Detective teams: one cast and one killer, split into two or three teams dealt around the cast in character order. Everyone keeps their character, the killer is on somebody's team, and each team commits its verdict in writing before the reveal. It works at either length. The room still runs one cast and one vote, so the teams live on the call: together for the statements, accusations and reveal, a breakout room or a chat per team for the evidence, and each verdict sent to the host privately.

Two tables: for 16 to 20 people, run two whole games at once, 8 to 10 to a table, each with its own cast and killer. Start a room per table from your host page; the room gives each table a different version as long as at least two of the four are still unplayed on your copy. Put each table in its own breakout room, then bring everyone back to compare verdicts. It is for a team that wants a race, not a shorter night.

What if some of the team is in the office?

Run one game for everyone. Everyone plays on their own phone, the office included, so everyone has the same version. Everyone is on the call too: one laptop for the office, its microphone where it can hear the whole table, lets the people at home hear the statements and the arguing. In the office, people can join from the QR code on the host's phone.

Which game, and which edition?

The Tenth Winter is set at a young distillery's tenth year-end party at the founder's lake house, ten winters after the co-founder went through the ice on the lake; The Cold Ledger, a true-crime podcast, has reopened that death, and a new one comes at the toast. A company party story at a company party: judge it for your team. The Hundredth Episode, at a podcast's live taping in an old theater, turns on sixty seconds of dark. Both are for ages 16 and up, with no gore and no sexual assault.

Each comes two ways. The printable is for a team in one room: the host prints one version, picked blind, and the evidence pack, and How to Host a Murder Mystery Party at Home covers setup. The digital edition is for the call, and our article on the digital editions has the details.

The Tenth Winter's story starts ten winters earlier in Accident, Drink Involved, a cold case for one or two players, out since Friday. The Tenth Winter can be played on its own; if you will play both, play the case file first, because the party talks about that case.

One purchase covers the whole team. The Tenth Winter and The Hundredth Episode are each regularly $34.99 for either edition, and $27.99 in the Halloween sale through October 31.

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