Foul Play is afoot After Dark – review and giveaway

Disclosure. This post is a review of a product I was sent for free.  All opinions are my own.

There seems to have been a trend in my recent posts of what we’ve been doing for entertainment during lockdown, so games have been interspersed amongst my many book reviews. We’ve also been digging the jigsaws out of the cupboard, but they are more of a long term project that we just do a few pieces at a time. This is the especially the case with the 2000 piece one we’re working on at the moment, which is very difficult with lots of sky, water and rock.

But today I’m sticking with the game theme, as we have received another game free to review. This time it is Foul Play, The Manor House Murder Mystery Card Game from After Dark. Now regular followers of my blog will know that I love to read a good murder mystery story, but I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned how much I enjoy seeing a murder mystery on stage or being involved in a murder mystery game. Whether it is solving or actually being the murderer, which I’ve done twice. The first occasion was at a party but the second time, one of the amdram groups that I used to belong to, had been booked as the entertainment for a murder mystery night. Yes people actually paid to try and guess and if I recall, none of them worked out that I was indeed the culprit. And guess how many versions of Cluedo we have here, not one, not two, not three but four. We have the original version, Super Cluedo, Harry Potter and Doctor Who versions.

Murder Mystery events are the bread and butter business for After Dark and of course the pandemic has kept actors out of work for the time being, although they do hope to be back performing soon. But they extended their business model to come up with the Foul Play card game.

Dispatch was super speedy and I was very pleased to see how small the box was, just the size of a pack of playing cards. The boys have so many games that rattle around in big empty boxes, that we are almost running out of shelf space. But as the cards fitted so snugly in their box, I really didn’t see the need for the plastic around the cards inside. Hopefully they will reconsider that.

This is a game for 2-5 players and is suitable for age 8+. It is set in Edwardian England and the Lord of the Manor is dead. You have to work out which suspect killed him. There are two versions of the game, one where you play as Good Cop and the other as Bad Cop.

We tried the Good Cop version first, where you need to uncover the three pieces of evidence to track down the killer. My youngest got really into the swing of things by having several magnifying glasses as props and writing his suspicions and clues in a notebook. Although other players along with the fish seemed to be his prime suspects rather than those on the cards. The fish being the Red Herring of course! And his detective bear joined in the fun too.

However props and notebooks are just window dressing for extra fun. All that is needed is the Foul Play deck of cards. But beware of other players stealing your cards, as I became a target. The boys kindly left me with one card rather than eliminating me from the game, so I had to steal a card back in order to have enough cards to revisit the crime scene.

The next day we played again but as Bad Cops this time. With 15 pieces of evidence in play, we found this to be a much faster game, as you’re trying to pin the crime on any suspect. Although Good Cop would have been quicker if my son had realised that watches didn’t have to be worn on wrists, He had the killer card, but swapped it at the crime scene.

Until you have played the game a few times and become more familiar with the suspects, I did initially feel one of the pieces of evidence was slightly unfair. It said the killer is not related to any other suspect. I subsequently discovered that there are some extra downloadable resources on the website, so we could have printed a full list of suspects. And read a handy synopsis on each suspect, although the formatting needs to be improved to prevent text wrapping over other text.

The instructions were very comprehensive. The only things we felt unsure of were whether to shuffle the discard pile before restarting it again as the Evidence Locker, and should both players get to pick a card when swapping on Fair Play or only the player who played the card.

As per all of my game reviews during the pandemic, we didn’t just limit it to playing in out household, we also tried it out over Zoom, which worked fine too. Great for mental health and wellbeing, to be able to involve those that the pandemic has forced into a lonely isolated lifestyle.

Foul Play currently retails at £8.95. Excellent value in my opinion and so much fun. The official case file reference for solving this crime is #foulplaygame and I’m delighted to see that a second game Once Upon A Crime will soon be hitting the shelves. Any suggestions for what other versions you would like to see?

And I’m hosting a rafflecopter competition, courtesy of After Dark to giveaway a Foul Play card game to one lucky winner!

a Rafflecopter giveaway – Please click on the link to enter.

And you may see my other giveaways here.

I’d love to hear your favourite game or idea for a new game.

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