Since the announcement of Borderlands 4 for the Switch 2, we’ve had a number of updates from Randy Pitchford and the team at Gearbox Software about what exactly fans can expect.
Following the news last month the game would run at “mostly” 30fps (instead of 60fps) on Nintendo’s new hybrid hardware, we’ve now got another Switch 2-related update. This was spotted in the game’s official FAQ, which was updated earlier this month.
The first striking thing about Aetheris is its strange and colourful look. The second thing that strikes about Aetheris is the gorgeous animations and storybook trappings of its presentation, even in its loading screen transitions. The third is the strange vulnerability radiating from the village of lizardy people you’re responsible for, and the parties you form with them. The fourth striking thing is that this a roguelike, it’s a bloody roguelike isn’t it, oh goddamn it.
It also binds the spacebar to “accept”, something I learned by accidentally starting a bossfight in a terrible position that threw a whole party away. Or would have, if not for the ol’ ctrleffor. I will never be stopped.
The fact that I kept playing instead of sulking and libelling a random CEO is a hint: I bloody love Aetheris.
When it comes to planning out a game night, you can never go wrong with a murder mystery game. Even in a world where virtual party games exist online, nothing quite beats having a physical board game for game night. Mystery board games are fun for everyone involved, giving guests a thrilling whodunit throughout the night to keep people engaged and on their toes. What’s more, there are numerous types of board games within this genre to choose from, whether you want a classic game of Clue to play with the whole family, or something more involved to play with friends like One Night Ultimate Werewolf.
TL;DR: These are the Best Murder Mystery Games
In this board game shopping guide, we’ve collected some of our favorite murder mystery games that are well worth picking up for your next game night. Although selected with adults in mind, each one offers a unique experience and can be played with a wide range of players so you can find one that best fits your crew and vibe! Which ones have you played?
One of the most well known board games in general, Clue is a classic murder mystery game that can be played with up to 6 players. Each player is a suspect as you gather information to try and unravel the mystery behind who killed Mr. Boddy of Tudor Mansion, along with pinpointing where he was killed and with what weapon. A classic detective game for the whole fam and one of the best family board games you can buy.
There are a lot of different versions of this game available in 2025, including an Advent calendar version you play all month long.
One Night Ultimate Werewolf
Werewolf is a beloved game that’s great for big groups, but One Night Ultimate Werewolf takes it in a thrilling, fast-paced direction with no moderator, no elimination, and no downtime. Play a quick round with up to 10 people and solve the mystery of who’s the Werewolf over the course of one night.
This game takes solving a murder mystery to a new level, as one player takes on the role of a restless ghost who assists the rest of the players, who take on the role of psychics, to help figure out who their killer is. It can be played with up to 7 players and will take you just over 40 minutes to play through. It’s the perfect mix of mystery and horror board game.
Exit: The Game – Dead Man on The Orient Express
Exit: The Game brings the Escape Room setup into your own home. With this story, you’ll need to step into your Agatha Christie shoes to solve the case before the train reaches its destination. It can only be played once, though, as you’ll need to dig into the case materials in the box to write down notes, fold, and cut different materials.
If you’re interested in this type of game, we’ve researched a variety of other escape room board games you may also like.
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective – The Thames Murders & Other Cases
In a similar vein of classic detectives and stories, the Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective – The Thames Murders & Other Cases game is another way to step into those shoes to solve a case. This one in particular features 10 detailed mysteries in total to solve around Victorian London, so you can keep the murder mystery game nights going for a while or play completely solo. The Sherlock Holmes board game series are a bit more challenging than a classic whodunit – best for ages 12+ – but many adults find it hard too!
If you find yourself really enjoying the theme of this game, we recommend you also check out our guide to the Sherlock Holmes books in order. Arthur Conan Doyles original stories are what started it all.
Hunt a Killer – Death at The Dive Bar
For true crime fans, this game is one to add to your collection. Hunt a Killer – Death at the Dive Bar is an immersive puzzle game that can be played with 1 or more players and involves you solving the death of a local bar owner named Nick Webster. It’ll take you about 45-60 minutes to work through as well.
As a brand, Hunt a Killer has a ton of different options to choose from. So if you don’t like this particular mystery, you can check out the website for everything currently available.
University Games Murder Mystery Party Case Files: Underwood Cellars
For those who want an even more in-depth murder mystery to solve, the Underwood Cellars Murder Mystery Party Case Files will take you about 2 hours or longer to get through. While playing, you’ll need to figure out what happened to famed Napa winemaker Cary Underwood, whose body was recently found after disappearing 20 years ago.
Deception: Murder in Hong Kong
Unlike a few of the games listed above, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong will only take you a quick 20 minutes. Similar to Werewolf, this is a game where you and a group of people try to narrow down who commited the murder. Players take on the role of Murderer, Accomplice, Forensic Scientist, Witness, and Investigators, with each having an interesting part to play in the mystery.
13 Dead End Drive
This game is another classic murder mystery board game for everyone to enjoy, especially since it’s a bit like a board game version of Knives Out. In this game, Aunt Agatha has passed away, and without any surviving relatives, she’s left her vast fortune up for grabs. Only one will inherit it… will it be you? Play with up to four players and set traps to get rid of the competition.
MicroMacro: Crime City
Not only is this game filled with 16 different cases to solve, but solving them has an interesting Where’s Waldo element as well. You’ll need a keen eye to track everything down, but a magnifying glass is included with the box so you can get in close to investigate every detail. You can play with up to four people and it’ll take you between 15-45 minutes to complete.
Rear Window
Based on Hitchcock’s famous thriller movie of the same name, this riffs on Mysterium’s structure. One player is the director, who draws a random selection of people to live in four apartments and some associated characteristics for them. They then have to use a limited selection of images to try and communicate to the other players, without words, who it is that lives in which apartment. Except this game has a colossal potential twist: sometimes, but not always, there’s also a murder to solve. In this instance the game is no longer a cosy cooperative affair as the director can win if the murder stays secret, while the other players gain a team victory if they can work it out. It’s an intriguing twist that makes every game a tightrope worthy of the master of suspense himself.
Cryptic Killers: Murder of a Millionaire
Cryptic Killers is an enormously popular series of murder mystery cases that you can either solve solo or cooperatively. Murder of a Millionaire was the first in the franchise, leveraging a cunning range of visual and text clues, alongside frustrating red herrings, to present you with the case of Chloe, a lottery winner found dead in the park. You’ll need to solve logic puzzles as well as interweave vital details from the reams of included props to work out which of the game’s suspects has an alibi, and which are guilty. As well as being a great mystery, the pack contents encourage you into the lives of its characters, creating a compelling narrative alongside a fun case to solve.
Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game
Detective sells itself on some bold claims. Firstly, that it’s a highly realistic simulacrum of real police work, casting you in the shoes of genuine modern-day detectives presented with reams of evidence from its online case files. Second, that it’s a long-term campaign in which information in early cases can often become relevant again in much later ones, creating an engrossing, branching narrative to enjoy. While only actual police detectives can comment on the first claim it certainly mixes murder mystery and board game mechanics to present you with complex cases to work through, and it delivers handsomely on its second claim, drawing you in to a story worthy of top drawer TV drama.
Matt Thrower is a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing in tabletop games. He’s also been published in The Guardian, Dicebreaker and Senet Magazine as well as being the author and co-author of several books on board games. You can reach him on BlueSky at@mattthr.bsky.social.
One of the many surprises during the Switch 2 reveal in April was the new game Kirby Air Riders, a sequel to the GameCube outing.
It’s scheduled to arrive later this year, so what’s the latest? Game director Masahiro Sakurai has issued another small update via social media today, mentioning how he thinks the team should be able to share some information about this game soon.
If you happen to be heading to the 2025 Pokémon World Championships in Anaheim, California this weekend, you can receive a special Pokémon Scarlet and Violet distribution.
The Magic: The Gathering release calendar puts us squarely in Edge of Eternities territory now (until Spider-Man next month…), and our new Lobster Overlord, Ragost, is still seeing a lot of love.
If you saw this coming, you might want to buy a lottery ticket, because Energy Chamber has seen a significant price jump despite being a card that debuted 21 years ago.
It was available for a few cents, but foil versions have climbed up to almost $12. It remains to be seen if that’ll hold, but the increased value is due to its ability to generate counters in the upkeep step. That’s an ideal inclusion for the new Counter Intelligence precon, or the Final Fantasy Counter Blitz precon.
Next up, Ragost, Deft Gastronaut is sticking around, now at around $15. Its market value, however, is low. Expect to see it drop as more printings arrive.
He’s causing a bit of a stir in Commander now, too, with Legion Extruder seeing a steep increase in value up to around $10. For context, that’s a 600% increase in market value for a two-cost card that deals damage when entering and can sacrifice other artifacts to create Golem tokens.
Also on the rise is Simulacrum Synthesizer, which is up to over $40 after a drop in recent weeks. A three-cost Artifact that turns other artifacts into artifact creature tokens, it’s a powerful card that’s also seen a buff from ol’ Ragost.
Finally, Astrid Peth has seen a comeback since debuting in the Universes Beyond: Doctor Who set.
She creates Food tokens, while also exploring when you sacrifice them, potentially keeping the land flowing or powering up Astrid.
Planetfall
A few Edge of Eternities cards are starting to drop off, with Adagia, Windswept Bastion losing 77% of its value according to TCGPlayer.
Famished Worldsire is still up for almost $20, but its market value has dropped to around $8 for the extended art version.
Thrumming Hivepool is trending downward significantly, too, now with market value of around $6, while the Showcase version of The Dominion Bracelet is now $7 and change down from close to $45 in recent weeks.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
How Strange Scaffold Tackled the TMNT World in Tactical Takedown
Chris Slight – Head of Creative Marketing, Strange Scaffold
The place:
New York City.
The time:
Three years after the deaths of Shredder and Hamato Yoshi…
…the father, mentor, and friend also known as Master Splinter.
Strange Scaffold, as a group of developers, are known for making their own small contained worlds like I Am Your Beast or El Paso, Elsewhere, but when the opportunity arose for us to play in another playground we couldn’t turn it down! We got to make a game, with our own story, set inside the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” world. And if you read the above, you know we really got to make our story.
TMNT: Tactical Takedown began its life as a totally different game, well, kind of. I’ll let Xalavier Nelson Jr, our Studio Head tell you. “Teenage Demon Slayer Society, another Strange Scaffold project, was the origin of our journey adapting action game mechanics to a turn-based format.” This game served as a jumping off point, letting the team hit the ground running even faster when Tactical Takedown began development. “While that project is still in development, we’re incredibly glad that its technology got to result in TMNT: Tactical Takedown existing, and coming out sooner than later!”
“The game has a more focused scope and scale than most TMNT projects, we had really exciting conversations with Paramount about that giving us the freedom to pursue large, bold creative leaps.” Xalavier noted, “So, we took the biggest leap we could–with the Turtles on the cusp of adulthood, in a world where Splinter and Shredder are both dead. Paramount signed off without a single note and the rest is history.”
Bringing in a new leader for The Foot Clan had a natural choice, to us, in Karai but they are teaming them with Baxter Stockman? “Karai is a complex character. She’s ambitious, but forever in Shredder’s shadow. She’s honorable, but ruthless.”, Michael Futter, Licensing Producer on the game, “Teaming her up with Baxter Stockman may seem like a curious choice, and players will need to experience the game to understand why she’s thrown in with him. Not all is as it seems…”
An interesting challenge was translating the feeling of each Turtle to a tactical combat system. “Tom Vinita, our game’s lead designer, did an excellent job in identifying early on what the brothers would need in order to feel different from one another without overloading the player with too much information (or making the moves too difficult to understand).”, Amanda Farough, Executive Producer on the game noted, “He struck those chords relatively early on, allowing our level designer, Aubrey Rugroden, to build out the individual ‘biomes’ with each of the Turtles’ moves allowed to shine through.”
Another question for the team was how can you marry the more fast-paced feeling that the TMNT are known for with what is traditionally a slower genre? “The real tricky bit”, Amanda went on to explain, “was finding the right rhythm in balancing the game’s methodical tactical rhythms with its fast-paced beat-em-up elements. It took time to tune the kits and the biomes to find that balance, but it’s been worth it, especially in refining for Remix Mode and this console release.”
Remix Mode, which is available right away with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown, allows you to ratchet up the difficulty and variety as soon as you finish a chapter. New enemies and new problems will require you to rethink your strategies while also customizing your Turtles loadout to create the perfect moveset for the challenge ahead of you.
We were incredibly fortunate to get to make a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that was still very much a Strange Scaffold game, as Xalavier noted the game featured “Eccentric, player-first decisions.” which is always a hallmark in a Scaffold game. “We didn’t put any polish or feature in the game unless it fit the scope of what our team could make–and would be directly visible to players. That involves putting a lot of ego aside, which is a hard thing to do!”
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown is the first-ever turn-based TMNT video game. Inspired by the classic cartoon, you’ll experience a bold new approach to the world of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Splinter and Shredder are dead, and as the Turtles approach adulthood, they’re not just growing up… they’re growing apart.
Battle the Foot Clan as a powerful new leader takes control in action-packed campaigns that showcase each Turtle individually. Carve through enemies in 20 constantly-mutating levels that grow, shrink, and add new threats with each turn, inspired by classic TMNT games! Rack up points for high scores while experiencing a powerful original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles story from acclaimed indie studio Strange Scaffold. This is the next step for Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo, and Raphael–and you can experience it with flying, slashing figurines in graphic novel-inspired splendor.
In fact, the set will be standard legal for quite a while yet, but given its incredible popularity, some products are unlikely to see reprints. Chief among them are Collector Boosters and Collector Editions of Commander Decks.
Here’s how you can find them.
What Happened To Magic: The Gathering x Final Fantasy Collector Boosters?
Collector Boosters offer 15 cards, including 5–6 cards of rarity Rare or higher and 3 – 6 Uncommon, 3 – 5 Common, and 1 Full-Art Land card, with a total of 8 – 12 Traditional Foil cards and 0 – 3 cards with a special foil treatment.
It’s worth stressing that these don’t offer any additional cards you won’t find in the standard versions, but give every single card a foil treatment. The price for that privelege is $159.99 and up, with the Final Fantasy 7 deck closer to $500 – yikes.
But Wait!
Believe it or not, you don’t have to sell your house to buy Magic cards. There are a whole host of more affordable, but still awesome, cards you can find on the secondary market for a few dollars each.
Even some of the full-art, borderless cards are available if you know what to look for, and we’ve got a handy list.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
