Last month was my best friend Mackenzie’s 25th birthday. Not only that, but it was her golden birthday (25 on the 25th!) so we wanted to do something really fun and special. I did some research on how to throw her the most epic birthday party ever (trust me, there are a LOT of things you can do for your birthday in NYC) but being that I’m a huge murder mystery fan, I stumbled onto the perfect idea when I found a company that sends you a box full of goodies to throw your own murder mystery dinner!

The company is called My Mystery Party and they sell themed games for pretty much any occasion. When I found their website I was a bit concerned at first because of how plain it was. Just a white background and some dark red accents. But, they did have some nice content, like theme pictures, how-to videos, and blog posts, and the simplicity made it pretty easy to navigate. They had good filters, too, so the top menu made it easy to find what you were looking for. It made it seem like they’re pretty legit once I saw that they had other stuff on it besides just their products, so I wasn’t afraid to order anything from them, even though I’ve heard horror stories from people who had bad experiences buying stuff online! The link to the game I chose is here if you want to check out!

The theme for Mackenzie’s birthday party was Radical ‘80s. The game has characters for 8-18 people, which was perfect because with everyone I invited plus Mackenzie, Jeremy, and I, we had exactly 12 people! I sent out the super cute invitations and it was really fun to assign people new identities (like peppy Mackenzie was now pop star Toni Oregano and my super shy friend Jake from college was now a mobster named Scab Face. HA!) When the RSVPs came in I started offering costume suggestions so that we could all look totally ‘80s.

When it came time for the party, everyone showed up in their rad costumes, and we were all super excited but I was a little nervous because I’d never hosted a party this complex before. Usually it’s food, drinking, talking, that’s all… but this time I had to play host to a bunch of shady characters, which took some getting used to but was a ton of fun when I got the hang of it! I served snacks that were around in the ‘80s like Cool Ranch Doritos, pudding cups, Ring Pops, and Hi-C! None of us had really been born yet in the ‘80s, but it was fun to pretend!

The thing that was great about this game was that nobody else was a huge fan of murder mysteries already but everyone was able to get really into the story because of how involved everything was! There were envelopes for everybody with details about their characters and there was even a website for everyone to go to (one for every theme!) that sort of immersed us all in the world of the story before coming to the party. I put a note with the website into the invitations so everybody could come prepared!

Also, the story of this particular mystery was really fun! Everyone talked about it afterwards saying how much they enjoyed it. I really liked that everyone was able to be involved and that nobody had to be really into mysteries to be able to have fun.

The game and all of the preparation was really expensive so it’s a really good thing I love Kenz so much otherwise she would have to have been satisfied with a cupcake and a sweater. So the downside to this game is you have to be willing to spend the money, but it’s a lot of fun if you are! Don’t let the price tag scare you because it’s totally worth it!

(Also, Mackenzie was super excited to get to be a Toni Basil parody. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard her sing Mickey. At least a thousand for sure.)