Hi, everyone!
My name is Jason Dusenberry, founder of Killer Mystery Games, LLC. What can I say? It has been a long road ever since getting the idea for the company in late 2021, leading up to its launch, which recently took place on 4/21/23.
I have always had a creative, storytelling mind. I've always loved creating stories, characters, and content. My wife and I love horror movies and mysteries. Put the two passions together and low and behold, Killer Mystery was born. But there was a lot of sweat equity in the meantime. My career and background weren't related to this type of thing at all. But, I saw my opportunity colliding head-on with my storytelling and I went for it. Re-writes of stories, changes in formats, thinking up ideas for clues, doubting those ideas for clues, and then coming up with different clues. LOL. Logo, box art, structure, website, marketing...there was a lot to figure out! I really enjoyed murder mystery subscription game boxes, my wife and I played many on date nights. However, one thing I wanted to do a bit differently was to emphasize the overall story. Then I had an idea: I wanted to write stories that had a ton of action, great plots, some twists and turns, interesting characters, and give the story to the player, upfront. "How could this possibly be done?", I thought. But then I thought about writing the story, detailing the action, and developing the plot, characters, suspects, and clues. All well and good, but how could I just give people the story and not give things away? Then it hit me! Just write the stories as a complete mystery, like really, really mysterious. No dead giveaways. Just a "Killer" story that plays out like a good movie or short novel. My goal was to get people to ask questions as they would read through it all. "Is it the most obvious suspect?" "Is it not?" "Why is there a certain story discrepancy?" "Does that seem off?" "How much do I really trust that character?" "Does that clue really link to that other clue?" Hints are, of course, littered throughout the story in addition to clues given to the player. The final finishing touch? Create story cards and scenes. This would give it a movie/novel/short story feel. Something that draws you in and has you feeling as if you're not simply playing a game, but are truly being immersed and entertained while you play the game.
I immediately started brainstorming on not only catchy names for the stories but a logo that depicted the "brand story". A knife as the "I" in Killer? Cool, but let's make that font more murdery, shall we? I wanted to depict a cool, sleek vibe to this newly created brand. I wanted it to scream out to people that it would be creepy, cool, sometimes weird, spooky, mysterious, and mesmerizing to the point that people would be counting down the days until their next episode would be delivered.
I titled this blog post "Killer Mystery Brand Story" and with good reason. I wanted the emphasis of the brand to be on the story. Plain and simple. Tell a captivating story and let the rest fall into place. So, after a lot of hard work, I want to say thank you, not only to my wonderful and supportive wife for her support on this endeavor but also to everyone else who supported me and helped me work on it along the way. Murder Mystery Subscription Boxes are so much fun. It is my sincere hope that you enjoy these stories. And that is the story of the Killer Mystery Brand Story.
-Jason
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