Most team building asks people to perform. Stand up, share something personal, pretend to be a character called Lady Fotherington while your colleagues watch. It's the reason half your team goes quiet the moment the invite hits their inbox.
This works the other way round. Your team are the detectives. Someone else has already been murdered, the evidence is already on the table, and three suspects are waiting to be questioned. Nobody performs. Your people investigate.
The reason it works? We don't tell them what to do next. There's no puzzle one leading to puzzle two. They decide what to read, who to pull in, what to ask, and when they're ready to name a killer. The case is the same for everyone. How it's cracked is entirely up to them. If you're weighing it against the obvious alternative, we've put murder mysteries and escape rooms side by side for team building.
What happens in a session
A briefing sets the scene. A body, a location, a handful of people who all have a reason to lie. Then the case opens and your team is on its own.
What we see, almost every time, is that teams sort themselves out within about thirty seconds. Somebody takes the evidence. Somebody starts building a timeline. Somebody appoints themselves interrogator. Nobody's assigned those jobs. They just happen, because there's real work to do and people gravitate to the bit they're good at.
From there it's a proper investigation:
- A full evidence pack to work through: crime scene photographs, floor plans, an autopsy report, witness statements, financial records, phone screenshots, timelines that don't quite line up.
- Live interrogations. Your team questions the suspects directly and gets answers in real time. They can put a piece of evidence in front of a suspect mid-answer and watch what happens to the story.
- A limited number of questions per suspect, so every one has to earn its place. This is where the arguments start, and it's the best part.
- New evidence released in waves as they go, which reopens theories they'd already closed.
- Warrants they can apply for, if they can make a case for probable cause.
- Clues available if they get stuck, at a cost, so asking for help is itself a decision.
At the end they submit a theory. Not just a name. Method, motive, the evidence behind it, and, the question that catches most teams out, the evidence that contradicts them and why they ruled the other suspects out.
Then the reveal, told properly, walking back through exactly how it happened and where the truth was hiding all along.
Teams against teams
Above a handful of people, we split the group into teams and they work the case against each other. Same evidence, same suspects, same clock. Everyone's chasing the same answer and only one team gets there first.
It changes the atmosphere. Teams get competitive about it, guard a theory they think nobody else has spotted, and there's a genuine edge to the reveal when everyone's committed to a name. It also means nobody's a spectator, because your team needs you working.
Worth being clear about the difference: teams compete inside a single event. Separate sessions are what we run when your group is bigger than 30.
Nobody has to act
Worth saying plainly, because it's the objection we hear most. No costumes. No character cards. No script. Nobody stands up in front of the room. If your team's idea of hell is being made to perform at work, this is the version built for them.
The performing is handled. Your team just asks the questions.
Two ways to run it
A cold case. One of our existing files, ready to run. The evidence is already there, the suspects are already lying, and your team picks it up from the archive.
A case written for your team. We build it from scratch around your world. The victim, the suspects, the motives, all new, and all of it set somewhere your team will find uncomfortably familiar.
Sceptical about the AI? Fair enough. Don't take our word for it. We've got a free ten-minute case on the site where you can interrogate one yourself and see if you can trust a word it says.
Why we cap it at 30
Every event runs for up to 30 people. That's deliberate, and we learned it the hard way running a single session for 65.
Thirty is the number where everyone still has their hands on the evidence and a real say in who gets accused. Above that, people drift. Some teams race ahead while others stall. The quiet ones, who in our experience are very often the ones who crack it, disappear into the background. It's the same reason smaller groups tend to get more out of these events.
Bigger team? We split them across separate sessions, on the same day or on different days, whichever suits you. Sixty people becomes two proper investigations instead of one crowded one.
Murder mystery team building evenings
Plenty of teams run this as an evening rather than a working afternoon, and it holds up well as a social. It's a few hours of everyone genuinely absorbed in the same thing, then a natural reason to carry on talking afterwards, because there's always someone who wants to argue about the suspect they had pegged from the start.
It also travels. Because it runs live over Zoom or Teams, a team spread across the country plays together in the same room, which most evening socials can't manage. In December, that same format makes it a murder mystery Christmas party the whole team can join.
Pricing
Every event is up to 30 people, up to 3 hours, fully facilitated.
- A cold case: £700 for the first event, then £550 for each additional session.
- A case written for your team: £1,700 for the first event, then £550 for each additional session.
- We also run these with professional actors playing the suspects live on camera, from £1,500. Ask us if that is what you are after.
Everything's included: the investigation platform, the full digital evidence pack, and a dedicated facilitator running it start to finish. 50% deposit on booking, the balance the day before.
We don't charge VAT. We invoice from Estonia, so UK business customers account for it themselves under the reverse charge.