Which Murder Mystery Dinner Company Should You Use?

The right murder mystery dinner company depends on what kind of night you want. Book actors if you’d like to watch, a scripted kit if you’d like to save money and read along, or a guest-improvised murder mystery if you’d like your guests to be the show. Then check four things before you book: who does the improvising, how many people the game is built for, where the company operates, and what’s included.

I’m Lisa Aspeling, and I’ve written and hosted murder mystery dinners in Cape Town since 2010, so I’m not neutral. I’d still rather you booked the right evening than the wrong one of mine.

What are the main types of murder mystery dinner?

There are three, and they have about as much in common as a book club and a bar fight.

Actor-led dinner theatre. Professional actors play the suspects and perform the story over dinner. Guests usually help a detective question them, then vote on who did it. Your guests are the detectives. The actors are the suspects.

Scripted kits. You buy a box, a narrator leads you through it, and everyone reads their lines from a booklet. It’s a play you read together.

Guest-improvised murder mystery. This is what I do. Everyone gets a character, and some characters arrive with a secret to keep and a secret to reveal. Nobody reads a script. The accusations, alliances and questionable accents are up to the guests. There’s a structure underneath, but the guests do the improvising, not actors. Your guests are the suspects.

	Actor-led	Scripted kit	Guest-improvised
Who entertains	Hired actors	The script	Your guests
Your guests are	Detectives	Readers	Suspects
Who improvises	The actors	Nobody	Your guests
Best for	People who’d rather observe	Tiny groups	An immersive experience – guests forget their phones.

If you’re comparing specific companies rather than formats, I’ve also rounded up the best murder mystery dinners in South Africa.

What should you check before booking a murder mystery dinner company?

Five things, and a good company will answer all of them without being asked.

Who does the improvising? Actors, nobody, or your guests. This decides whether your guests watch the evening or make it.

How many people is the game built for? A game written for eight and stretched to twenty falls apart. Mine are written for 8 to 30 players, and each game states its own range.

Where do they operate? I’m based in Cape Town. I travel to Johannesburg, Durban and further when the client covers flights and accommodation, and Print & Play games work anywhere in the world.

What’s included? With me: all the game stationery, including invitations, place cards and clue cards, plus me hosting. Costumes, decor and prizes aren’t included, for reasons explained below.

How much notice do they need? A game written for your group takes me about six weeks. A Print & Play game can be downloaded tonight and hosted this weekend.

Why improvised instead of scripted?

Because reading lines is stressful and playing a character isn’t. I’ve played the boxed games. I remember watching my line come down the page towards me and quietly hoping I wouldn’t trip over it. That’s not a party. That’s a school play with wine.

It’s also how I started. One year my aunt brought a boxed British murder mystery to our family dinner. The next year she forgot it, so my mother and I wrote our own. There was no time (or printer) to write a full script, so we gave everyone a character, a secret to keep and a secret to reveal, and left the rest to them. It was better. It’s been better ever since.

The other reason is that guests write better material than I do. The first time I hosted my wedding game, it was for a group from the UK at a five-star guest farm. The groom is the victim. That’s not a spoiler; you’d know it the moment you opened the game. A rather shocking secret comes out, and then the room did something I never wrote. They decided the newly widowed bride should marry the groom’s brother. The game happens to include a minister, so we encouraged him, and he married them. At the reception. Of the first wedding.

How does a murder mystery dinner party work?

Guests get their characters before the night, arrive in character, play through dinner while the secrets come out, accuse whoever they suspect, and then the murderer confesses. The whole evening takes two to three hours. Here’s how it runs.

Before the night

We set up a WhatsApp group for the guests. That’s where the invitation goes out, written as though you’re already part of the story. If the game wasn’t written for your group, the host decides who plays whom, because they know their guests and I don’t. I also post a short guide to what happens on the night. It answers the question everyone is privately asking, which is “will I make a fool of myself?” (No.)

Arrival: 30 minutes to an hour

People never arrive all at once, so I greet each guest as they come in, as their character, never as themselves. Ideally there’s a separate area for drinks before dinner, with canapés if you want them. This part matters more than it looks. These aren’t trained actors. They’re ordinary people stepping into someone else’s skin for the night, and that takes a little settling in. Half an hour with a drink in hand does wonders.

If the budget allows, I recommend a photographer taking in-character portraits in front of my murder mystery banner, while every outfit is still perfect and nobody has lost a prop yet.

The setting becomes part of the game too. I once hosted my Braai Day game, set at a top-secret government summit, at a relaxed neighbourhood restaurant. So I opened by apologising to the delegates: the five-star hotel had been unavailable, and Parliament was being renovated.

Dinner

Everyone moves through to the table, where place cards and clue cards are waiting. In most of my games, this is where the murderer finds out they’re the murderer: on their place card, at the same moment everyone else sits down. They then have to keep a straight face through three courses.

Every game has a reason for the gathering: the reading of a will, a ball, a fundraiser, a wedding. Sometimes the characters already know there’s been a murder. Sometimes they find out between courses. Either way, I write plenty of subplots so there’s more to argue about than the body. In the Braai Day game, the summit is there to debate renaming Heritage Day. Some tables never quite recover.

Once the murder is announced, the mudslinging begins and the secrets start coming out. When they’re all on the table, everyone makes their accusation. Then I tell the room the police are on their way and the venue is locked down, so the murderer may as well confess. They always do.

The awards

The room votes for best male character, best female character and best dressed. Chocolates or trophies are up to the host, but a round of applause from people who’ve just watched you lie for three hours is usually enough.

After the game

The murder’s solved and nobody wants to leave. Strangers meet each other properly for the first time, which works remarkably well, and friends catch up out of character. One group carried straight on into a silent disco. By the end of the night the table feels like a group of friends, which was the point all along.

Which type suits a birthday or milestone party?

Go guest-improvised if the party is about the people in the room. Before I write a bespoke game, I sit down with the host and go through every guest: their personality, their talents, and what they’d enjoy playing. Each character gets something its player can be proud of, plus a quirk or two. One guest loved a costume change, so his character got several.

For a friend’s father’s 60th, I was told one guest was very quiet and asked not to put any pressure on her. So I wrote her a gentle, low-key character with nothing she had to perform. She stole the show and was voted best female character of the night. I’d love to take credit for that, but all I did was leave her room.

If your guests would rather eat in peace and let someone else perform, actor-led is the kinder choice.

Which type suits a corporate or year-end function?

Buy a Print & Play game. You download it, print it and host it yourself, this weekend if you like. My Print & Play games are guest-improvised too, and many started life as private commissions, including the wedding game. At R1,099, you’re getting a game someone once paid a great deal more for.

Choose guest-improvised if you want your team to take part, and actor-led if you’d rather they watched. Actor-led asks nothing of anyone, which is restful. Guest-improvised goes the other way. Everyone has a character, so there’s no sideline to stand on. The secrets are scattered around the room, so solving the murder means talking to colleagues outside your own department, possibly for the first time.

Which type should I choose if I want to host it myself?

If you’d rather write your own from scratch, the DIY ebook shows you how I do it.

And if you’re overseas and flying me in isn’t in the budget, I’ll write the game for you and train you to host it. I did that for a stag weekend in a castle in England: a medieval murder mystery, hosted by the party themselves.

How many guests can play a murder mystery dinner?

My games are written for 8 to 30 players. Most sit between 8 and 24. The wedding game goes to 25, and the botanical museum game to 30. In that one, guests gather for the unveiling of an extraordinary artefact (ancient Egypt meets botanicals meets hair care), and the presenter doesn’t survive the presentation.

Thirty is the ceiling, for a practical reason. These evenings run on conversation, so everyone at the table has to be able to hear each other. At 24 it’s already a cheerful bun fight. At 30, in a room with poor acoustics, I need two microphones and a sound system. Without them the room splits into side conversations about traffic, and the murder loses its audience.

Within each game’s range, numbers can flex. Every game has essential characters, who carry a secret to keep and a secret to reveal, and expendable characters, who carry no secrets but interrogate as hard as anyone. The essential players need to be there on the night. The expendable ones can be added or dropped without the mystery noticing.

What’s included when you book a hosted murder mystery?

All the game stationery, including the invitations, the place cards and the clue cards, plus me running the evening. Because I wrote the game, I know where the best moments are hidden and how to steer the room towards them without anyone noticing they’ve been steered.

What’s not included:

• Costumes. Guests put their own outfits together, and that’s deliberate. The effort of choosing an outfit is when people start becoming their character, so they arrive already committed. One recent guest wore a military uniform, accessorised so pointedly that nobody needed to read his character notes.
• Decor. I can recommend a professional event decorator I like working with.
• Prizes. Up to you. Applause is free.
• Photography. Not included, but highly recommended.

Can you host a murder mystery dinner outside Cape Town?

Yes. I travel to Johannesburg, Durban and further when the client covers flights and accommodation. Or skip the airport and host a Print & Play game yourself, anywhere in the world.

What a guest-improvised murder mystery isn’t

It isn’t gory. It’s not Halloween. The comedy comes from how ludicrous the whole situation is, not from blood.

It isn’t an escape room. Nobody wanders from room to room hunting for clues. Everything happens in conversation, around one table.

It isn’t at anyone’s expense. I once had to play a character in someone else’s game that couldn’t be played without offending somebody. I spent most of the night sitting very still and saying as little as possible. Nobody should pay to have that evening, so nobody at mine does. Quirks, yes. Humiliation, never.

It’s also the wrong choice if your guests want to watch rather than take part, you need a game written for you by next weekend, you’d like costumes supplied, or your group is bigger than 30. Better you hear it from me now than work it out over dinner.

Frequently asked questions

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Lisa Aspeling is the founder of Murder Mystery Guide, South Africa’s original guest-improvised murder mystery dinner, running since 2010. In 2026 she won Murder Mystery Dinner Experience of the Year and Best African Entertainment Brand at the MEA Markets African Excellence Awards.

If you know which kind of night you’re after, have a look at the games or tell me about your event.