Murder with Friends

A Party Game

In 2017, I hosted a party called the 20x24. You had 20 hours over 24 days to make a project you'd been putting off. Friends produced incredible works - there was embroidery of the Friends coffee shop, a felt banner of our group's favorite dog, a new product in an existing skin care line. Someone even learned animation.

I made an app. I'd always like the idea of Murder Mysteries, but hated the disposable nature of them. I wanted something that was low friction - you could be kicking around plans for the evening, and it'd be as simple as installing an app. Or you could plan it for months and make costumes for your characters. So I wrote an app that would permit an hour of fun, and then wrote a murder mystery around the constraints/capabilities of the app.

The code sat in GitHub for months. Then years. Finally, old friend Mac asked if I had a Murder Mystery for their Halloween party, and that was all the motivation I needed to dust off the keyboard.

The app uses Flutter (+Flutter Web) and a very minimal Firestore backend.

Lessons Retained

The best feature of the first version was a lack of sign-in. Players could receive a link from the host and go straight to the website or to the app if they had it downloaded. Player information - like notes, checklist items, survey responses, votes - are all attached to the login code instead of an authenticated account.