Melancholy Killer

I absolutely love playing Hunt A Killer games but sometimes I can get them cheaper on Amazon than I can from them. This game is very time consuming but definitely worth a play if you enjoy solving crimes!

Love the concept. Quality exactly as expected. Didn't enjoy the storyline

I have practically every set they have ever released. I haven’t ONCE been disappointed with a game I’ve gotten from them. Great group activity, high quality evidence, and always has a aspect to you that brings you in wanting to know…whodunnit? These whodunnit style games are my favorite and hunt a killer has it down to an art!

I like the 'games' you get from this company. I have picked up several over the past few years.This is not the one you start with if you have never done something like this before. This is one of the harder ones with little direction or help to get you started.You get a briefcase and in the briefcase is everything you need to solve the mystery. My first problem was figuring out what mystery I was solving. Who killed the killer? Who started the riots? Was the killer guilty? And there are more options than that.Once I started going through this box I realized that there were hidden ciphers that were a bit difficult to notice on first look.Usually I do this with a group of people but I thought because there wasn't much in this case it might be easier for me to do on my own. I think it would have been more fun with a group of people to split up the duties and have extra eyes on everything.There are hints online. That helps if you get truly stuck. The hints are not Answers- that is they don't exactly list everything out but rather you can look at a hint and then go back to the mystery and try to use the hint as a jump start.There is a website component to this game as well. You will want to have your phone or computer handy. Best I can tell to this point (haven't completely solved it yet) the website helps but it is not completely web based which is good.Several hints for doing these kinds of mysteries.Save everything. Don't let anything get lost because what you see as a scribble on a paper might actually match up with another paper later. Look in everything, hold things up to the light, pay attention to strange words or words with capitals where they shouldn't be (might be a cipher or a clue). Take notes. Make a time line.Those things will generally help you as you work to solve these mysteries.

This game is very niche, you will either love it or absolutely hate it. If you are one of those folks who will enjoy a nice long session of D&D, then you will love it. If you prefer the casual pace of a game of Monopoly, you will despise this game. The game requires a serious investment of time and creative thinking to truly immerse yourself/team in the mystery. We took a total of about a month before verifying our guess to solve. In my opinion, since we are of the D&D camp, it was very worth the money and it was nice to get together with the kids and put effort into solving the mystery.

So much fun! I played this with my friends. It was challenging and exciting. Loved it!

The content does not justify the price. This is one of the most expensive HAK sets yet I was disappointed with the experience. There are three reasons for the disappointment:1. This set contains very few interactive items and most of the clues are in the form of documents, so one can get quite bored/tired when going through the clues.2. The quality of the items in the set is subpar compared to other HAK sets. For example, the color of a document in this set is so faint that one can barely read the message on it. I can only guess that the printer was running low on ink but the manufacturer did not bother reprinting this document. There is also an item made of threads that is falling apart out of the box.3. The logical connection between the clues is very weak. Unlike other HAK sets, this set requires one to figure out the motives of the suspects mainly through conjecture, not through concrete evidence. As a result, the final answer is a bit unsatisfying because you really need to guess rather than reason based on concrete evidence.Most likely I won't buy such an expensive set from HAK again given this disappointing experience.

I usually love all of the Hunt-A-Killer games. And I know this one was supposed to be the hardest. But it was not hard because of the story. It was hard because it was pure document overload. It took 4 hours just reading through everything first. Nothing extra fun about it. A bit of a bummer