Hunt A Killer: Death At The Dive Bar

If you’ve been on social media or listened to an American podcast in the last few years, you’ll likely have heard of Hunt A Killer. It’s the world’s premiere mystery in a box game, allowing players to carry out their own murder investigation. To win, you must go through the suspect list looking for their means, motives, and any alibis they may have – figuring out some fiendish puzzles along the way. It’s a neat premise that’ll appeal to anyone who has ever watched a thriller and found themselves frustrated at the detectives’ stupidity or yelled ‘why didn’t they think of that?’

So on a dark, stormy evening myself and two fellow sleuths gathered to see if we could solve Death At The Dive Bar. With a noir soundtrack in the background and deerstalkers donned, we went through each clue as a team and took numerous notes. I don’t want to say too much about the story, as these things are best encountered fresh. But it’s an intriguing little mystery that employs some of my favourite genre hooks. In short, a local landlord has fallen off a cliff, And though the authorities think nothing suspicious happened, one of his former colleagues says otherwise. So she’s enlisted you (and anyone else you play with) to get to the bottom of it.

The documents themselves are very well put together. The various photos, suspect bios, and adverts, among other things, look dead authentic, and it’s clear a lot of care has gone into making them as real as possible – heck, you even get a functional bottle opener. You’ll want to inspect them closely as each item contains multiple hints, often interconnecting subtly. It’s all really immersive, and by the end, we all found ourselves emotionally invested in avenging poor Nick. It also lasted longer than the hour advertised – by the time we had gone through each bit of evidence in sufficient detail and cracked the PIN to open the last pieces, almost twice that had gone.

Without going into spoiler territory, I found the mystery a little obvious – though to be fair it advertises itself as an “easy” one. We wavered a few times, but we still figured out who did it quite early. However, that did little to hamper our enjoyment as there was a lot of fun to be had putting all the pieces together to learn what happened that fateful night. And even if you know whodunit, as any mystery fan knows it’s equally important to know why they did and why nobody else could have. There are red herrings aplenty and some unexpected reveals. Thus as we began to build up our understanding of each suspect, and the community as a whole, it was extremely rewarding. Some of the codebreaking also taxed our little grey cells.

While Hunt A Killer has a range of boxes available, including more horror-oriented ones such as Blair Witch, this was an excellent introduction to their products. Subscription plans are currently available internationally on their website. Use the following codes for discounts.

HUNTGA1010 – $10 off any item
HUNTGA10 – 10% off Order
HUNTGA20 – 20% off 6mo or 12mo Subscription