BLOG TOUR: Foul Play - After Dark Murder Mystery Events

Welcome to Edwardian England. The Lord of the Manor is dead! The servants are our lead suspects and it's up to you to unearth the evidence, seek out the suspects and catch the culprit in order to scupper the other sleuths, and win this game of murder!

There's more than one way to catch a killer though. So what's it gonna be? Good Cop or Bad Cop? These two game versions come with their own set of rules and tactics to crack the case and finger your suspect, but will you use fair play or FOUL PLAY?

The Game is Afoot! Playing as detective, you’ll need to find the three evidence cards that point to a specific suspect in order to catch a killer in this crazy criminal caper. Will you uncover them in the crime scene? Could the other detectives be willing to collaborate and share their findings? Or will you resort to more tricky tactics, and plunder the proof you need to solve this crime?

What did I think?

Well this is a bit different, instead of a review of a crime book it's a review of a crime game and what a brilliant game it is.  The game is presented as a pack of 52 cards but this is no ordinary pack of cards as there's a murderer among them.  The players (between 2 and 5 of them) must act as detectives and race to collect the evidence in order to be first to identify the murderer.  There are even two variations of the game (Good Cop and Bad Cop) so there is great fun to be had with this small package.

The suspects

When you first open the pack you will find four double sided instruction cards.  The instructions are clear and easy to understand so don't worry if you don't usually play games.  The cards give an overview of the game and the rules of play, details of each card's actions, how to play and win Good Cop and how to play and win Bad Cop.

We played both versions of the game with two players and had very different experiences but I'll talk a bit about Good Cop first.  In the Good Cop variant, you are searching for three evidence cards that will identify the murderer.  We had great fun stealing cards from each other, swapping our cards over with cards in the crime scene and discarding cards we didn't want.  It took around half an hour for one of us (not me) to find the three evidence cards and identify the murderer.  There were plenty of laughs to be had along the way (especially when playing the Foul Play cards to steal cards from your opponent) and we thoroughly enjoyed playing.

Playing Bad Cop with two players only took about five minutes to play.  As all the evidence cards are in play, it's a lot easier to find three evidence cards and identify a suspect.  I think if there had been more players, it would have taken longer for one of the players (not me) to identify the murderer.  This isn't necessarily a negative point as it would be good to play Bad Cop if you didn't have much time and just wanted a quick game.

Game in progress

Taking up as much room as a pack of cards, Foul Play is the perfect game to take with you when visiting family and friends or jetting off on holiday.  It's not suitable for a travel game as it does require a small playing area to create a nine card grid of the 'crime scene', an 'evidence locker' of cards in play and a discard pile.

We played five or six games and although I lost every single one of them, I absolutely loved it.  I'm not usually one for playing games but Foul Play is so easy to play and so much fun that it's definitely something all of the family could enjoy.  Priced at £8.95 it's excellent value as it's basically two games in one and there are hours of fun to be had.

Foul Play is the perfect stocking filler for murder mystery fans, book lovers, gamers and anyone who needs a bit of fun in their life, so that's everyone!  Start leaving massive hints that you want this game for Christmas and I hope you find one in your stocking this year.

I received a gifted game to review and all opinions are my own.

My rating:

Buy it HERE

How Foul Play was born:

What’s a Murder Mystery Events Company to do?

With a pandemic sweeping the nation and no sign of being able to perform their confounding criminal cabarets or incredible interactive investigations any time soon, they needed to come up with a plan, another way to provide mystery to the masses (and provide income to keep themselves afloat)!

Well, lockdown does strange things to people, especially actors who can't go out and perform. So one fateful evening, Ben & Lee Cooper-Muir decided to come up with a whole new way to murder people. Keeping their cards close to their chests they plotted and schemed until Foul Play : The Murder Mystery Card Game was born. So, what to do next?

This is where After Dark enters the picture. After all, Ben and Lee were two of the operators of the infamous murder mystery company. Maybe they could collaborate to bring the game to the masses. When Lockdown restrictions were eased a top-secret meeting was held with the other criminal masterminds behind After Dark, Helen Burrows, Sophie Webster & Tom Fisher and a pact was made. The game would be launched and licensed under the After Dark banner. In true After Dark style, the team burst into action and then began the beta testing, design updates, promotional planning, character changes, proofing, proofing and more proofing until finally all the kinks were ironed out, mysteries solved, and FOUL PLAY came to life!

We hope you enjoy playing it, and although we all hope to be back performing soon, WATCH THIS SPACE! Now we know we can create and produce games we've got a lot more fun things planned for the future!

Follow the tour and see what other players thought:

BLOG TOUR: Deep Dark Night (Lori Anderson Book 4) - Steph Broadribb

Fearless Florida bounty-hunter Lori Anderson travels to Chicago to trap the head of a notorious crime family, in a high-stakes, nail-biting mission that sees her trapped in one of the city’s tallest buildings during a blackout…

A city in darkness. A building in lockdown. A score that can only be settled in blood…

Working off the books for FBI Special Agent Alex Monroe, Florida bounty-hunter Lori Anderson and her partner, JT, head to Chicago. Their mission: to entrap the head of the Cabressa crime family. The bait: a priceless chess set that Cabressa is determined to add to his collection.

An exclusive high-stakes poker game is arranged in the penthouse suite of one of the city’s tallest buildings, with Lori holding the cards in an agreed arrangement to hand over the pieces. But, as night falls and the game plays out, stakes rise and tempers flare.

When a power failure plunges the city into darkness, the building goes into lockdown. But this isn’t an ordinary blackout, and the men around the poker table aren’t all who they say they are. Hostages are taken, old scores resurface and the players start to die.

And that’s just the beginning…

What did I think?

Oh my goodness, Deep Dark Night is an absolutely thrilling rollercoaster ride; the Lori Anderson series just gets better and better!  Every time I read a book in this series I can't imagine how Steph Broadribb can better it but then she goes and does it again and again!  Deep Dark Night is the fourth book in this outstanding series featuring bounty hunter Lori Anderson and you could most certainly read it as a standalone, but I suspect anyone who does so will scoop up the earlier books to read more of Lori's story.

Lori's family has always played a big part in this series but they were well and truly split up in Deep Dark Night.  Lori's daughter, Dakota, takes a back seat in this novel when she is left in the care of Lori's friend, Red, while Lori does what she hopes is her final job for FBI Agent, Alex Monroe.  Lori's partner, JT, heads to Chicago with her as her wingman but even he can't protect Lori 24/7 when events conspire against them.

Steph Broadribb has really outdone herself this time; Deep Dark Night didn't just have me on the edge of my seat gripping my kindle with sweaty palms, I was also holding my breath as if any disturbance in the atmosphere would affect the characters.  The whole story is balanced on a knife edge and the plot is so perfectly crafted with little cliffhangers at the end of chapters that make you keep reading just one more chapter until there are none left.  

Tense, claustrophobic and filled with danger, Deep Dark Night is my favourite Lori Anderson book so far.  It has made me want to read the whole series all over again to get my Lori fix; I'm totally addicted to Lori Anderson and I'm never going to rehab!  This is one of those books that you want to rate more than 5 stars but I don't think even 100 stars would be enough to show how outstanding it is.

Prepare to be reading well into the deep dark night when you pick up this book as you will not be able to put it down.  Deep Dark Night is a magnificent instalment to an outstanding series and I can't recommend it highly enough.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

My rating:

Buy it from Amazon




About the author:

Steph Broadribb  was born in Birmingham and grew up in Buckinghamshire.  Most  of her working life has been spent between the UK and USA. As her alter- ego - Crime Thriller Girl - she indulges in her love of all things crime fiction by blogging at crimethrillergirl.com, where she interviews authors and reviews the latest releases. She is also a member of the crime-themed girl band The Splice Girls. Steph is an alumni of the MA Creative Writing (Crime Fiction) at City University London, and she trained as a bounty hunter in California, which inspired her Lori Anderson thrilliers, She lives in Buckinghamshire surrounded by horses, cows and chickens. Her debut thriller, Deep  Down Dead, was shortlisted for the Dead Good Reader Awards in two categories, and hit number one on the UK and AU kindle charts. My Little Eye, her first novel under her pseudonym, Stephanie Marland was published by Trapeze Books in April 2018. 

Follow the tour: