Pizza takeout, a bottle of wine, and Unsolved Case Files Harmony Ashcroft made for a fun family dinner night. So fun, we already ordered another case to solve!

TLDR: Great writing! We cracked the case in three stages, and each part made sense and was very satisfying!

Solving mysteries at home is a step up from watching TV mysteries or even reading them. And our family, fans of all of those forms of mystery, have discovered we love being the detective.

Mystery games make a great family night or party activity

Playing mystery games as a family has turned into our go-to staying-in activity when we want to get everyone out of their rooms, off their phones, away from screens, and doing something that engages our minds so we don’t feel forced into hanging out with each other.

Not only do we end up enjoying each other’s company, but we have also learned that we all have different skills as detectives.

We turn to my daughter’s uncanny visual memory to remember clues we all saw but quickly forgot. And we turn to my son’s high-level problem-solving brain to put pieces together.

We, adults, have skills, too. And, though it was hard for the kids to admit it, we brought a lot of value to the gameplay.

So we all came away with respect for each other, which can go a long way toward helping families get along and stay connected.

It’s great at parties, too, if you have friends who like to think while they drink.

Unsolved Case Files Harmony Ashcroft

Our latest case was Unsolved Case Files Cold Case Murder Mystery Game: Who Murdered Harmony Ashcroft? (Or, since that’s super long, Unsolved Case Files Harmony Ashcroft.)

One thing that really stands out about this case is how cohesive it is.

The case unfolds in three stages. We spent the first ten minutes swimming through the file contents, with everything spread out on our big coffee table, each of us skimming through articles, autopsy reports, police statements, and photographs.

It took some real attention and analytical thinking from all of us. And it drew on all of our shared history of ‘showverdosing’ on Veronica Mars and inhaling every mystery every printed.

We worked hard on solving this and ended up caring quite a lot about who did actually kill Harmony Ashcroft. The testimony, clues, and police reports were so realistic that we wondered if this was a real murder. And, like in a real murder, some of the clues were buried in images and testimony that didn’t match the evidence.

It took real attention to detail on the photos to unlock this one.

If you are stuck, focus on images that don’t match the testimony or that place witnesses where they couldn’t have been if they were telling the truth.

We finally solved this unsolved case file and learned who killed Harmony Ashcroft. But it was hard enough that we were proud of ourselves when we did. We were so proud, in fact, that we opened a bottle of champagne. (The “kids” here are all old enough to drink but young enough that buying nice champagne is out of reach for them. So this made for a nice end to our hard work.)

It was super fun! And this kind of entertainment is now on repeat at our house. Those 12,000 five-star reviews on Amazon are well-earned.

1 or more players.
1 hour.
Age: 14+
Can’t play a second time, because the game involves solving one mystery, and there’s only one solution. But you can repack it and give it to a friend.
Makes your brain a police investigator for the evening.

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