Only four people could enter the castle and knew of Mary. Jessica’s maid said they all had an appointment with Mary on the day she went missing.

 
You are one of them. Now, click the card and choose your role.

Here are everyone’s testimonies.

THE PRINCE
I love spending time with Mary and buying her various clothes and accessories in yellow. No matter what happens, she always looks at me with a smile. She heals my heart. I’m sure Mary likes me, too! She loves my hugs. She never refuses my invitations, so why should I take her away?

THE GUARDIAN
I don’t like animals due to my allergies. Staying in the same space with them makes me feel uncomfortable. But if Jessica loves them, I will try to accept them even though I will get sick. I don’t even want to touch her because she is dangerous to me. Why would you suspect me?

THE PRIEST
Jessica is too much of an introvert and needs to grow up. She can’t always stay with Mary like a child. She needs to develop new hobbies and have real friends who can go out with her on horseback rides or picnics instead of always staying in her room. I understand how important Mary is to Jessica, and I know taking Mary away won’t solve any problems.

THE WITCH
My lovely Jessica deserves all the good things; having Mary is not enough for her. Linda is a sweet girl. I just want her to be with Jessica along with Mary. If they get along well, I can introduce more friends like her to Jessica. I didn’t take anything with me when I left that day. Don’t doubt me. My teleportation magic can only teleport humans.

Everyone is telling the truth, but the suspect is playing a trick. Please go through the webpage carefully and find out who took Mary and why. Clues are given during your reading.

Another mission for you, please find out Mary’s real identity.

A round table, seven chairs and a host. In “No Room Left Inside”, a group of players were finding out the secrets of a 19th-century Hong Kong street. This Hong Kong-based murder mystery production, Look Left Nathan, is one of the Raven Detective’s most recent hits.

The Raven Detective opened its first branch in Sai Ying Pun after its first store in Prince Edward. It is a shop specialising in tabletop role-playing games (TRPG). Joshua Zhao, 35, the owner of these two bars, also worked in a company’s IT department. Because of his passion for murder mystery games, he opened these two bars and became a part-time owner.

“The games take place in a room with a round table, where players sort out information among themselves and write on a board based on the posted clue cards,” Zhao said. “It’s just like a  meeting. This is the TRPG.”

Zhao is a passionate fan of detective scripts. This genre makes up the majority of the scripts in his bar. The bar caters to Hong Kong drifters, referring to young, educated mainlanders living in Hong Kong with a certain income level and enjoyment of deductive scripts.

Around 180 game scripts in Zhao’s bar can be categorised into boxed, city-limited, and exclusive scripts based on geographical restrictions. Boxed scripts are the easiest to buy. They can be purchased from many outlets, including Taobao. The shops must present a proposal in order to gain the rights of these city-limited and exclusive scripts. These scripts will only be licensed to a limited number of shops in the same city or area. Therefore, a lengthy vetting process is required before the shop can ensure a contract.

In Zhao’s bar, the price for boxed scripts is around HK$2,000 each, while a city-limited script and an exclusive script cost HK$3,688 and HK$4000, respectively. Each game takes three hours or more to complete.

“Pricing in my bar has barely changed since 2019,” said Zhao. A player can play the games at around 10% of the script’s cost. “Additional fees are needed on some occasions,” Zhao added. “If the script is too complex and takes a long time to play, or if the job requirements for the game host are overloaded, the price will be HK$40-60 higher,” he said. The most expensive game in the bar is HK$600 per player, and the script takes 15 hours to complete.

Compared to the development of murder mystery games in mainland China, the industry in Hong Kong is in its infancy. According to Zhao, there are around 50 Cantonese-speaking murder mystery bars in Hong Kong, while there are only 10 Mandarin-speaking ones. In mainland China, as of July 2022, there are already more than 1,000 murder mystery bars in Shanghai, according to data from iiMedia.

As one of the first entrants in the murder mystery market in Hong Kong, it has become apparent to Zhao that murder mystery is becoming increasingly popular in the city. “Despite the epidemic’s impact, the murder mystery industry still shows a growing trend in Hong Kong.”

Indoor entertainment activities in Hong Kong, including movie-watching and karaoke, are relatively homogenous and expensive due to the high cost of rent and equipment. A three-hour 3D IMAX Avatar movie costs about HK$300 on opening day, which is comparable to a four-hour to five-hour murder mystery game. In comparison, the murder mystery game is a more cost-effective entertainment activity.

“Recently, murder mystery games have more interesting scripts, and their reputation has gradually improved,” says Zhao. “All your friends are playing, and you’ll also want to experience the activity’s excitement. That’s why more players and shops exist, even with the pandemic.”

The DM, a virtual character in the story, acts as the referee and umpire. They are in charge of introducing the backstory, guiding the players, and handing out the evidence at various points to keep the game going. Finally, they are also the ones to reveal the truth.

As a part-time DM, Zhiyun Wang, 24, a postgraduate at the University of Hong Kong, has hosted over 100 games. “I think the most important thing about being a DM is the service,” said Wang pleasantly. “In other words, a DM should make the players feel happy.”

Wang has encountered different people while hosting games. “When it comes to difficult levels, the most important thing is to guide the players and not to make it difficult on purpose,” said Wang. “In short, our duty is to make the player think of having fun and satisfaction after coming over to play the game.”

“Another vital ability for a DM is to judge time well and read people to engage them.”

Wang is an outgoing and optimistic person. He familiarises himself with every character’s script before the game starts. “Being fearless and cheerful is not enough for us. We need to hypnotise ourselves and try to play the role, which requires us to escape our personalities,” Wang said. “To be honest, I like this. It’s quite interesting.”

Click and slide to see more photos of a tabletop role-playing game(TRPG) bar

The inner look of a tabletop role-playing games(TRPG) bar.

Medieval-style tables, chairs, and cutlery are hidden in a red haze, giving a glimpse of the shapes of the sumptuous dishes. Next to the table, a girl in a black Lolita dress is painted on the drawing board, making the layered environment mysterious. However, when you approach the table, you realise that all this splendour has decayed. Delicate wine glasses are now playgrounds for climbing centipedes. The fruits and cream cakes have become a party room for rats and cockroaches. The ghastly white masks rest on the table, waiting for the next guest to join this bizarre masquerade party.

This is what Duoduo looks like, an introductory murder mystery LARP bar in Sunset Theatre. The owner, Cookie Lin, works at a bank, but after work, he and his staff would become roles in the stories.

Click and slide to see more photos of a live-action role-playing game(LARP) bar

The inner look of a live-action role-playing game(LARP) bar.

Doing business in Hong Kong, it is challenging for Lin to decorate a single room for a particular script because of the high rent. As the owner of two LARP bars: Sunset Theatre and Moonrise Cinema, Lin has a secret “weapon” to solve this problem, which is his own original idea.

“Black box is a concept from a kind of drama. It is a way of setting a scene in a play. It features an all-black environment in which a simple set gives the players a strong sense of the places they are in.”

The DMs in Lin’s bar would wear different costumes and perform as the game character. Their behaviour and speaking differed according to the game scenes to make the players more immersive. “Due to the details’ set-up, some rooms can only serve a specific game,” said Lin. “Changing the set is not easy, leading to the limited number of games that can be chosen in the bar.”

Lin’s bar has around 20 employees, all working part-time and running the shop together because of their love for murder mystery games. As a result, the bar is only open after 7 pm and on public holidays. Everyone wants to present a higher quality game, but there are many problems behind the enthusiasm.

“The love for mystery games unites my staff and me to open this bar. But our financial connections are not strong enough,” said Lin. “DM couldn’t get much money, especially for part-time workers. “I am considering managing this team better while presenting a quality game,” he said.

Publicity is another problem for Lin’s Bar. Unlike mainland China, Hong Kong has no online booking platform like DianPing or Koubei.com. For multiplayer social games like murder mystery games, Lin and Zhao’s bar still rely on WeChat and WhatsApp groups to form teams. This limits the shop’s exposure to new potential customers. Several murder mystery-related groups on Facebook offer various ways to team up for the game, each with many members. For example, a group called “LARP/Murder Mystery/Murder Mystery Games – Actor Murderer Discussion Forum” has over 4,000 members.

Hong Kong is a diverse city with various language groups. “I think the most important thing this market should be doing is getting people of all backgrounds and all languages to experience the game,” Lin said. “It’s an opportunity. Eventually, this market will expand toward other language groups, not just Mandarin and Cantonese. It could easily be a market opportunity outside of China as well.”

For murder mystery game agents, only the number of sales counts. The best seller is the best script for them. And for the murder mystery bars, however, they pay more attention to the popularity. “I often see scripts that suddenly become popular on social media platforms. They may not have great plots or creative designs. But with publicity, they attract lots of players,” Zou said. “Owners of bars would buy them for the popularity, although sometimes they don’t like the scripts themselves. Some of them always criticise the scripts while marking them as stars in the bar.”

Although becoming a murder mystery game script writer has no special requirements, a standout script is hard to write. “The way of narration is really significant and very difficult. I think it may even be the most difficult of all literary subjects,” Zou said.

From Zou’s perspective, types of literary works such as severe works of literature, fiction and dramas clearly distinguish protagonists and supporting characters. The main plot belongs to the main characters, and the whole story revolves around them, while the secondary characters play as a plot-driver.

“But for murder mystery script writers, even if you’re working the same story, you have to make all the characters in the story, from your point of view, feel like the story’s protagonists,” Zou said.

“If the player feels like an outsider in the story or just an instrumental person who acts as a plot driver, their experience of the game will be diminished. In other words, this would not be a good script.”

Concepts of the good script and bad script.

He laughingly called himself “a sunny and cheerful big boy in the game”, claiming the story could have been developed to the end even without his role. By telling his frustration and feelings of boredom, Lin’s song echoed many other murder mystery players’ sentiments who were once assigned as spectators. They showed their sadness and anger towards those games in the comments.

Like Zou’s description, such scripts that fail to make everyone feel like a protagonist are bad scripts. Players like Lin had a bad game experience by acting as an unreasonable character.

From Zou’s perspective, good scripts require writers with strong writing abilities. When coordinating the storylines for each character, scriptwriters also need to whet the player’s appetite to continue playing. “In short, you have to know what a murder mystery game is before you start writing,” Zou said.

“When hiring new writers, I won’t be overly surprised even if the candidate is a novelist or a screenwriter. But if the candidate said they had played 300 scripts of murder mystery games, I would definitely read their scripts carefully and test them. Because with that kind of experience, this candidate must have a basic judgement on what kind of scripts are good.”

Recently, the murder mystery industry has given rise to many different forms. New attempts, including combining the games with theatre and cultural tourism and other new businesses related to murder mystery games, have been popping up in cities such as Beijing, Chengdu and Changsha on social media platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu in mainland China. While diversity has increased the games’ popularity, it also created new concerns for workers in this industry. With the word “murder” in its name, it is hard for murder mystery games to be widely accepted by everyone.

According to a press release from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People’s Republic of China, Zhao Changlong, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said in the 2023 National People’s Congress that “local regulators should strengthen their efforts to review scripts that involve violence, gore and spirituality from the source”.

“I’m a bit worried because I found many creative elements of the game are disappearing,” said Zou. “Is the game still the same without ‘murder’?”

Amy and her friends dressed up in murder mystery games. Source: Amy Xue.

“They are all very nice people, and we give each other gifts and snacks. We cherish each other a lot,” said Amy.

The human spirit regulates itself. From time to time, we are troubled by destructive emotions. Climbing mountains, taking a walk on the beach, or enjoying a good meal can all restore our spirit to some extent and help us escape a bad day. However, we find it hard to regulate these emotions when hit with a life change.

“We usually call this self-regulation in the body healing,” said Larry Ng. “When a person’s healing function is ‘stuck’ by some thought or feelings and not working properly, external interventions are needed to remove the ‘blockage’, which is called therapy. The people who carry out the intervention are us, the therapists.”

Larry Ng is a registered dramatic therapist and a certified hypnotherapist. According to the Hong Kong Association of Drama Therapists, drama therapy is a practice of accompanying, guiding and intervening in psychotherapy with a clear intention and systematic use of drama and theatre, allowing the client to achieve self-discovery, personal growth, the transformation of dysfunctional coping and communication patterns, relief of psychological distress and improvement of mental health through an action-based experiential process.

In regards to role-playing, the murder mystery game is similar to drama therapy. Not yet attempted, Larry saw the potential of murder mystery games to be used as a theatrical tool in drama therapy. “Playing a role in a murder mystery game is therapeutic because it has high gameplay abilities which can attract children and teenagers,” Larry said.

Some murder mystery games’ level settings are fun and attractive. “Teenagers will be more involved in playing them. Sometimes by doing that, the clients can have a chance to play roles they wouldn’t normally play,” Larry said. Through role-playing, the therapist will provide scenarios so that the clients can think from another perspective and have new experiences. “From my perspective as a therapist, if I find it therapeutic for a client to have the opportunity to play the role, I can intentionally do an intervention to guide them,” said Larry.

Three layers of the murder mystery game.

“For teenagers, the murder mystery game is a trigger that draws them in and then prescribes the right medicine. Besides, the trigger itself is also part of therapy,” said Larry. “But playing alone may not fulfil that function.”

“Guidance is necessary for therapy to have an effect. Just like the DM in murder mystery games, drama therapy needs us therapists to give guidance.”

Although having the ability to become a tool in drama therapy, Larry thought there was still a long way to go. “Whether it can be developed systematically into a genre or a project depends on whether people are particularly passionate about it. It is difficult for one person to do this kind of work, and it may take a team to do it,” Larry said.

Larry is also one of the murder mystery game players and is interested in adding murder mystery to his research afterwards. “Not just from a therapeutic point of view, I can see that the murder mystery game is useful for education, social issues and psychotherapy,” said Larry. 

“It’s a tool that can make a difference. It can be derived out and have a bigger picture.”

Adeline Chan is a drama therapist from the Hong Kong Association of Drama Therapists. She customises complete treatment plans for different groups of people to ensure effective psychological treatment for those in need, such as children with emotional disorders, mental illness patients, senior citizens, etc.

Concept of a theatre game.

The guardian took Mary. He is allergic to animals, but Mary is a toy duck which doesn’t make him allergic.

“I was on patrol that day and passed by Jessica’s window. I saw that she was talking to a stuffed doll! I was really worried about her. Jessica is becoming less and less willing to interact with people now. She keeps everything bottled up inside and won’t even tell her parents, whom she trusts the most. I just wanted to create an opportunity so that Jessica can try to tell someone how she feels. I’m sorry I used this method and made everyone worry.”

Although he used the wrong way, the guardian’s method did help Jessica a lot. While looking for Mary, Jessica had been working hard to find clues and asking everyone about Mary, and she discovered that it’s not that difficult to communicate with people. Now, the king and queen realise Jessica’s loneliness and make time for her no matter how busy they are.

Jessica forgave the guardian and told him not to worry about her and that she would try to meet more new friends and go out with them. She gave Mary to the prince and put Linda, another toy duck her cousin gave her, on the bedside. She is trying to learn to handle diplomatic issues, and the priest has taken on the role of her teacher.

Everything was arranged for the best.

The murder mystery industry is developing rapidly in mainland China and gradually spreading into the Hong Kong market. According to iiMedia, the market size of the murder mystery industry in China has reached 17.02 billion yuan in 2021. 

Now, the murder mystery is not limited to leisure and entertainment. At the beginning of 2022, a Chinese Department of Peking University professor opened a murder mystery game workshop, mainly teaching scriptwriting. Students widely acclaimed the workshop.

In early May 2023, the inauguration ceremony of the Cloud Murder Mystery Academy, the first murder mystery academy in mainland China, was held at Jinzhong Information College in Shanxi Province. According to China News, the school subsequently used scripts created by school teachers and planned to open the community for recruiting. The college only offers  optional courses because of the lack of teachers. Some students who have studied in the college gave positive feedback. 

Extra Credits

Editorial Director    Hailey Yip
Multimedia Director    Madeleine Mak
Illustrator   Yuan Dirui & Xu Wenxin
Multimedia Producer   Feifan Yu
Copy Editor     Agnes Wang
Fact Checker    Claire Kan