How to Develop a Compelling Murder Storyline for Your Escape Room Party

And nothing goes better with a dastardly murder mystery than an escape room game. For real, it's the best way to 'gamify' your favorite detective shows, so you can enjoy a rip-roaring good time with your friends.

But you don't need to lash out on an expensive night out. For real fun, you can design your own murder escape room! You don't need to write like Ernest Hemingway or Mark Twain. In fact, you can craft a thrilling murder scenario for a DIY escape room at your house. Your friends will love it!

Pop quiz: what's the first thing you need for your MURDER mystery escape room? That's right! A victim. Someone needs to have terminated someone else in secret. The players won't know who the killer is when the game starts. They'll just know that a "murder most foul, as in the best it is," has occurred, and they must identify and possibly escape from the killer!

Your story will work best if your victim is important. Choose a mayor, a local celebrity, or someone of national prominence. Having an important victim gives everyone chills. The killer must be crafty and smart to execute such a daring plan. It makes finding the culprit that much more important!

Make sure your character has connections to every non-player character (NPC) you create. At the beginning of the game, everyone's a suspect. You want to make your guests work for the reveal! With an important victim, connections will be a cinch to create.

Don't choose a victim too close to home. No work rivals, exes (even if they live in Texas), or annoying next-door neighbors. You want your guests to have fun. If they think they're involved in a dry run to plan a murder, they will not enjoy the game.

Besides, the game's more fun if the killer could be anybody. Can you imagine a murder mystery thriller that revealed the assassin in the beginning? No one would keep reading! Solving the mystery is the fun part!

The scene of the crime is completely up to you. You could even choose one of these escape room themes, and add a murder! Just remember that you have to decorate to fit your chosen crime scene. Your place doesn't have to be real. You could choose Mayberry, Atlantis, or the Death Star! You only need a place where the killer could perform the dastardly deed without being caught. I'd definitely go for a place with a killer audio/video setup. Decorating that would be a blast!

You have a victim. Now, you need a villain. Fortunately, you can decide which of the usual suspects actually committed the crime. First, though, you have to develop their stories.

Your cast of NPCs will shape your story. They'll all have connections to the victim, but some may not have connections to others. You'll introduce them during the game and drip information to the players as they go through the room.

Don't make your NPCs too complicated. This is a 60-minute game. Your players must discover and process the information you give within that period. (Need tips for making the game itself? We've got you covered!)

When developing your NPCs, think of them as people. Give them real lives. Try to flesh out the following information for each NPC in your escape room game:

   • Their jobs. What do they do for a living? Do they work? If not, are they independently wealthy, retired, or have they fallen on hard times?
   • Their hobbies. Have some fun with this one. Do they collect stamps, play golf, or participate in competitive duck herding (yep, it's a real thing)? Does their hobby have any connection to how the murder was committed?
   • Their top skills. What do they do best? Are they incredible communicators, unbelievable athletes, or amazing organizers?
   • Their relationships with other NPCs. How did they cross other NPCs' paths? It's fine if not all of your NPCs have relationships, but each one should connect to most of the others.
   • Their ambitions. Do they want to retire early? Climb Everest? Make it to the national pickleball championships? Ambitions and hobbies are great places to connect NPCs, but you can connect them in any way that fits your theme.

You won't give all of this information to the players. However, you need it to understand your NPCs and their relationship to your story. You can even assemble the cast for your murder escape room before choosing the killer! Knowing your players may help you choose the best one for the job.

Each NPC needs a plausible reason to kill the victim. The reason could be money, love, or repeated insults on Twitter. Below is a short list of common motives your players will recognize quickly.

   • Revenge. Did the victim steal the NPC's lover, crash the NPC's business, or cut off the NPC's access to the victim's Netflix subscription? Players quickly recognize the revenge motive for murder.
   • Money. Financial gain is one of the oldest motives for murder. Is the NPC tired of waiting for a promised inheritance? Did he kill the victim to steal a winning lottery ticket?
   • Relationships. Always a great motive. Was the killer jealous of the victim's relationship with a lover, a parent, or Dr. Emmett Brown (you could take awesome vacations in his Delorean)? Consider making the villian jealous of the victim's relationship with another NPC. That will pique the players' interest.
   • Avoiding Exposure. The killer may have been scared. The victim may have known that she had an unavoidable addiction to Nutella or put grape jelly on her grilled cheese (don't knock it 'til you try it). If the secret is big enough, it may have been worth killing for.
   • Revolting/Rebeling. Is the killer a child of the victim trying to escape their parent's shadow? Is the victim a government agent who needs to be taken out for the rebellion to proceed?


There are as many motives as there are people. Still, for your escape room, it's best to confine the motives to the easily recognizable ones.

Characters don't materialize for the game. They have a past. The one-armed man who killed Dr. Richard Kimble's wife is a former cop working for an evil drug company. The government blaming Maverick's dad for the incident that claimed his life made Maverick fly like a maniac. Luke and Leia are twins. You get the idea.

The victim and all NPCs should have backstories. Make the backstories as simple as possible. Even though you won't divulge the entire backstory to the players, you need to be able to hint at the backstory. Hinting at what the players don't know adds depth.

Use the backstories to plan puzzles (here's a handy list for you). A solved puzzle may reveal the backstory of a character. Maybe the backstory is necessary for the next puzzle, maybe not, but the players now have additional information in their search for the killer. Each piece of backstory you reveal also draws the players in and adds to the excitement of the game.

Here's where you write out exactly how the murder happened. You will not show your script to the players (and you may want to keep it from your significant other). You need to know exactly how the murder happened to plan your game.

At this stage, you must also determine how to structure the game. You need to decide how many puzzles the players will face and how many rooms they must go through. You will structure the puzzles later.

You want to dole out information to the players slowly. The sequence of drops does not have to be sequential. You can give the players information that doesn't seem remotely relevant until they obtain another clue close to the end of the game. Set it up properly, and you'll give the players that fantastic "a-ha!" moment at the end of the game.

Create suspense with the information you reveal to your murder escape room players. Instead of saying, "Dave had an appointment with the victim," say, "Dave was very late for his appointment with the victim, which was completely out of character." Even if Dave is not the killer, the structure of the hint makes him a strong suspect.

Reveal the information about each NPC as the game progresses. Don't dump all of the info on each NPC at once. Build the suspense and make the players guess what they don't know.

Don't use red herrings! (Ever! Here's why red herrings don't belong in escape rooms) It's fine to keep them guessing the identity of the killer. It is absolutely inexcusable to send them down a dead-end street. They only have 60 minutes. Red herrings will breed very frustrated players. And they may make you the next victim.

You have two options: 

First, solving the last puzzle reveals the identity of the killer! This option makes for a great clear-cut ending. The players will either exclaim, "I knew it," or "no way!" This option also works well for large groups or when multiple games are played simultaneously.

Second, have the players guess the identity of the killer. Although this one is harder to pull off, it can be a blast if done correctly. (Check out Envy for an example of this in action) Make sure you give the players enough information to make an educated guess. Random guessing is no fun. 

For bonus awesomeness, have the players enter the guess into a police report or document related to your theme. This keeps them immersed in the game. They haven't escaped until they get the name right.

After the players finish, wrap up the game by adding the story of what happened to the killer and close out any storylines they were following in your murder escape room. Then answer the most important question — when can we do this again!