We just hosted a fun tween birthday party!
The theme was Murder Mystery- we took the board game Clue and turned it into a 2 hour party.
Decorations: Find or make all the weapons used in the game of Clue. Trophy (from Pinewood Derby), Pistol (airsoft), Knife (rubber prop), Poison (salad oil bottle filled with food coloring and water labeled with a poison symbol), Rope (Youtube teaches how to tie a hangman’s knot on a short rope), Bat (Nerf), Candlestick, Dumbbell, Axe (boyscout tomahawk), lay these around and later hide them as part of the game. Use masking tape to make a “Chalk Outline” in a central room, where the body was found. Candles make it look cool, but we didn’t use them since it was a daytime party and our cats like to prowl.
Warm Up Games
In the Details- One person is sent out of the room and others select one person to be the leader. The leader then starts performing a silly action like wiggling their eyebrows or dancing which everyone else follows suit. When the person returns to the group, they have to try to figure out who is leading the actions. It’s best to have guests sitting in a circle or scattered, so that the leader can wait for the guesser to turn their back before changing actions. (Warning: If siblings are playing, they can usually guess who’s leading by familiar gestures or dance moves!)
Murder Wink- each player is handed a card, only one has an X on it. Whoever gets the X is the murderer. Everyone returns their cards and “bumps” around the room. (Touch palms and make eye contact, then move to the next person doing the same thing.) If someone winks at you, you count to 5 slowly (in your head) and then do a dramatic death scene while collapsing on the floor. If someone thinks they know who did it, they make a guess. The goal is to find the murderer before he kills again. Dead people cannot make guesses.
Party Favors: Erasures to “hide the crime”, Nerd Rope to hang someone with, Nail polish- for touching up after a struggle, and copious amounts of chocolate because moms like me like to ensure that we have chocolate in the house.
Main games:
Clue- we labeled all the rooms to match the board game. We hid all the weapons and people and place cards throughout the rooms. The guests were provided with color coded costumes and had to make an entrance to our Masquerade Party by introducing their character with the story they had made up. We then sent them all to different rooms to look for clues to log on their notebook (list provided in board game). After 1min 30 seconds in the room a timer went off and they rotated rooms. At the end, all joined up in the room with the chalk drawing to make accusations. Some clues were missed so it took a few guesses to find the murderer.
Treasure Hunt- the Sarge is awesome with poetry. I made a list of the places that I wanted the treasure hunt to include and he made me rhyming riddles with a medieval flare. The 1st stop had an empty favor bag, each stop after, had a party favor for the girls to find. We did this at the end so that they had their goodie bags filled to take home.
The Imp had a great time and I was surprised, but the boys had fun too. We will definitely use this one again! It could be done in a youth group setting if we divided the kids into groups of 2 or 3. Next time, we will try to tie in a food theme just to make it more fun. Maybe hide something in a frozen ice cube in someone’s glass or something.