Leave Your ‘Dying Message’ for Detectives to Decipher
Can you leave behind a message so the detectives can catch your murderer?
What Is Dying Message?
Dying Message is a murder-mystery game for 2 to 8 players, ages 12 and up, and takes about 20 minutes to play. It retails for $30 and is available in stores. (Note that Oink Games’ website is only selling the Japanese language version at this time.) This game is about murder and simulates a bloody crime scene, so your tolerance for gallows humor and death will have a big influence on whether you’d enjoy this game or want to share it with your kids.
Dying Message was designed by Fumiko Shimizu and published by Oink Games, with illustrations by Jun Sasaki.
Dying Message components. Photo: Jonathan H. Liu
Dying Message Components
Here’s what comes in the box:
— Murder weapon (the box itself)
— 6 Letter tokens
— Letter die
— Judgement tile
— 30 Suspect cards
— Die cover
— 50 Message cards
— 32 Score chips
— Felt Blood
The murder weapon and a pool of “blood.” Photo: Jonathan H. Liu
Most titles from Oink Games come in very tiny boxes, so Dying Message has an unusual box size: it’s about the size of a VHS cassette (kids, ask your parents). The box sleeve slides off to reveal what looks like a grey brick with a blood stain across the face — this is the “murder weapon” for the game, and it’s accompanied by a piece of red felt to simulate a pool of blood. It’s a gimmick, but an effective one: whenever I show the game to new players, they’re always wondering what this little rolled up red thing is, until I spread it out on the table and it immediately becomes obvious.
The double-sided message cards range from totally abstract to completely representational. Photo: Jonathan H. Liu
The message cards are red images on a white background, and are supposed to represent the things you’ve managed to draw with your own blood as you lay dying. Each card is double-sided, so there are 100 different images that range from simple squiggles and lines to detailed drawings of recognizable objects. I do find some of these a little absurd, given the game’s story: you couldn’t write the murderer’s name, but you did take the time to draw an umbrella?
The suspect line-up. Photo: Jonathan H. Liu
The suspect cards are large, tall cards and each one has an illustration of the person, accompanied by their name, occupation, and a brief story. As you might expect, most of them have something suspicious about them, though sometimes they’re presented as rumors. There’s a wide range of characters in terms of nationality and age.
The two sides of the Judgement tile. Photo: Jonathan H. Liu
The judgement tile is a large cardboard tile, the size of the suspect cards, that says “Found Peace” on one side and “Lost Hope” on the other. The die cover is just a little cardboard box that’s open on one side, so you can roll the die and then cover it up. We haven’t always used it and just let the victim tell us what it was.
The scoring tokens are little stars with one stripe on the red side and two stripes on the blue side, and are used to track points earned. I’m always a little wary of double-sided point tokens because it’s so easy to flip one over (whether accidentally or on purposes), particularly if you’re the sort of player who likes to fidget with your game pieces.
How to Play Dying Message
There are three different ways to play with different types of scoring, but the general concept is the same. There’s the cooperative Joint Investigation, the Competitive Investigation, and the Speedy Death Showdown. The following rules apply to the two Investigation modes.
The Goal
The goal of the game is for the victim to create the best message for detectives to identify your murderer, and for the detectives to catch the murderer.
Setup
Players will take turns being the victim, with all other players being detectives.
For each scene, shuffle the suspects deck and lay out 6 cards face-up along with the letter tiles. Shuffle the message cards and deal 15 to the victim. The detectives step aside away from the game area (perhaps to an adjoining room) while the victim sets up the crime scene.
The victim secretly rolls the letter die to see who the murderer was, and then covers it with the die cover.
Gameplay
While the detectives are away, the victim sets up a crime scene using any number of the 15 message cards, the pool of blood, and the murder weapon, as well as their own body. You’re only supposed to use the face of the cards as dealt to you without flipping them to the back side. You’re allowed to arrange your body as part of the scene, including pointing at things.
My niece left us two groupings of messages — what could they mean? Photo: Jonathan H. Liu
The victim is supposed to take 1–2 minutes to arrange the scene (though realistically we’ve often had victims spend quite a bit longer, particularly if they haven’t read all the suspect cards yet). When it’s done, the victim should scream or moan to get the detectives’ attention.
The detectives come back to the scene, and should take photos of the crime scene, and then the victim can get up (they’re now a ghost, and cannot communicate in any way).
In the Joint Investigation, the detectives have about 3 minutes to consult and then decide on a murder suspect. The victim uses the judgement tile to show whether they “Found Peace” (the murderer was caught) or “Lost Hope” (the detectives arrested the wrong person). Each player takes a turn being the victim, and then each player awards 2 points to the “best” message, and 1 point to their personal favorite.
In the Competitive Investigation, the detectives decide on their own who they think is the murderer, and then simultaneously point at the suspect they accuse. The victim then uses the judgement card to indicate whether the murderer was caught by each detective. The victim and detectives earn points only if some of the detectives were right. (If everyone was correct, the message would have been too obvious and the murderer would have destroyed it, but if nobody was correct then the murderer got away.) The victim gets one point per correct detective, and each correct detective gets 1 point per incorrect detective.
The Speedy Death Showdown (for 2 to 3 players) is a little different in that everyone gets 15 cards, and instead of rolling a die, everyone secretly chooses a murderer, and at the same time races to make their dying message. Whoever finishes first takes the red felt and finishes their crime scene, and the other players become detectives. The rest plays out like the Joint Investigation — but since each person gets to be victim once, it seems that once you’ve been victim, you just sit out the race part.
Whodunnit? What is the victim pointing at? Photo: Jonathan H. Liu
Why You Should Play Dying Message
What is it about murder that makes it so prevalent in our entertainment, of all things? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because I’ve been gathering books that I thought would make a good Halloweeny Stack Overflow column, and I ended up with a pretty sizable pile of books involving murder — some are more traditional novels, some are comics, but there are also a few more interactive books where you’re solving puzzles to catch the killer. I’m personally not a huge fan of horror movies, but there’s certainly no dearth of gruesome deaths that many people enjoy watching on the screen. And, of course, there are lots of games involving murder mysteries, about ghosts sending messages from the afterlife, and even games where you may play as a killer yourself. Clue is a classic game … for kids!
Of course, there are also murders in the real world, as we see just about any time we check the news. It’s possible to be both horrified by the incidents and also fascinated by every revelation of the details. The true crime genre is a strange blend of reality and entertainment, playing off our inability to look away.
I think what distinguishes fact from fiction, though, is that in stories and games there is often an actual answer: you can figure out the whodunnit, or the motive, or the circumstances. By the end, you’ll see how the pieces fit together — and maybe you even had the chance to figure it out for yourself. In reality, things are often murky: the perpetrator is never found, or the wrong person is accused; motives aren’t clear; evidence points in multiple directions. In games, the crime itself isn’t necessarily the point: it’s just an excuse for the puzzle. (Nobody knows anything about Mr. Boddy, the perpetual victim in Clue, and you’re not really given any reason to care.)
In Dying Message, you don’t really care about motive. All you care about is finding the killer, and all you have to go on is this single crime scene, a small bubble totally separate from anywhere or anything else the suspects or the victim may have experienced. There are no witnesses and no other clues — just a blow from a blunt object and a message scrawled out in blood. I mentioned before that it seems strange that you wouldn’t just write something more obvious in your dying moments and that you would spend your last minute drawing a clock or something, but I suppose the explanation could be that you’ve just been hit over the head and aren’t thinking straight.
At any rate, it turns out that it’s an entertaining challenge to make pictures or words out of a random assortment of cards and attempt to tie them to a character’s story or occupation. You have a limited vocabulary, and you’re looking for a way to point at a suspect without being too confusing. Plus, there’s the “curse of knowledge” effect, where things may seem totally obvious to you while you’re creating your message, but it comes across as complete gobbledygook to the detectives.
As the detectives, you try to see things from the victim’s perspective. Are they pointing at something? Holding something in a particular way? Is that squiggle a word or a picture? Sometimes the answer seems obvious, and sometimes nothing lines up at all.
There are, of course, ways to score the game, but both the Joint Investigation and Speedy Showdown are pretty subjective — you just vote for your favorite. (It’s not entirely clear to me what the difference is between the “best” one and your “personal favorite.”) Most of the times I’ve played, though, we’ve just skipped the scoring altogether because the players have just enjoyed the activity itself, building out the messages and figuring out the clues.
For those who prefer games to have a less subjective way of determining winners and losers, the Competitive Investigation adds a nice twist that reminds me of scoring in Dixit. You want some but not all of the detectives to figure out your message, so that forces you to find some middle ground between being really obvious and being really obscure. And the time limits (for both the victim and the detectives) can add some pressure. Yeah, it’s stressful — but sometimes a bit of stress is what makes a game appealing!
So… yes, I’ve felt a little bit conflicted about playing a light-hearted game about murder, including with my kid and some nieces and nephews who were under the recommended age for the game. But also, yeah, we all had a good time doing it and I don’t think this game is going to teach violent behavior to anyone. And given that it’s spooky season, it seems like an appropriate time to break out Dying Message.
For more about Dying Message, visit the Oink Games website.
Click here to see all our tabletop game reviews.
To subscribe to GeekDad’s tabletop gaming coverage, please copy this link and add it to your RSS reader.
Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.
