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Our App is available for iPhone and Android HERE.
What is Backstabbers?
Backstabbers murder mystery app takes any event and gives you the ingredients to create a murder mystery. One person is secretly chosen at random to eliminate the other players without being caught. Players try to spot the Backstabber and guess their identity. Almost everyone is asking themselves “Who done it?”
“Thin-tech” facilitates game play and drives social interactions. Playing is focused on casually socializing because traditional narratives and characters have been removed.
How is Backstabbers Played?
Mingle and murder in this simple social elimination game. The randomly selected Backstabber tries to eliminate all players but one, and they win the game. The Detectives try to find the Backstabber. Play time is spent interacting with others using keen eyes to spot the Backstabber. Take a guess at who the Backstabber is, but be sure or you’re eliminated from the game. Guesses are not disclosed to others unless you are correct. Correct guesses win the game and restart another round.
Best played with 6-12 people. The app keeps track of everyone’s status, assignment of the Backstabber, and handling all guesses. Players are free to keep their focus on socializing and observing others. We believe this focus on socializing and not on their phone screen to be the primary benefit. There is no on-screen narrative to provide clues. Clues are found by watching how others are interacting in the real world. See more about to play here on the game site.
Brief history of murder mystery
Murders in the Rue Morgue – Edgar Allan Poe
“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” was first published in Graham’s Magazine in 1841. Today, it is considered by many as the first detective story. Poe referred to it as one of his “tales of ratiocination.” C. Auguste Dupin is a Frenchman who decides to solve the mysterious brutal murder of two women in Paris. Numerous witnesses are quoted in the newspaper as having heard a suspect, though the witnesses each think it was a different language. As the first true detective in fiction, the Dupin character established many literary devices which would be used in future fictional detectives including Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Two such devices are a personal friend who serves as narrator and the final revelation being presented first followed by the reasoning that leads to it.
Detective Fiction & Murder Mystery
With the rise of authors capturing the spirit of the crime detectives, and London’s police department forming of the very first detective squad, reading about solving murder mysteries as a genre is formed.
In the early 1900s Wink Murder or Parlor Murder became a popular game for social settings. Wink murder is a party game/parlor game in which a secretly selected player is able to “kill” others by winking at them while the surviving players try to identify the killer. With radio and then television, party games waned in popularity until mainstream games like Clue popularized the genre at everyone’s dining room table. Once again, murder mystery gave people a chance to tune out the television and reconnect in a fun way.
1949 – Clue
Cluedo (/ˈkluːdoʊ/), known as Clue in North America, is a murder mystery game for three to six players (depending on editions) that was devised in 1943 by British board game designer Anthony E. Pratt. The game was first manufactured by Waddingtons in the United Kingdom in 1949. Since then, it has been relaunched and updated several times, and it is currently owned and published by the American game and toy company Hasbro.
The object of the game is to determine who murdered the game’s victim, where the crime took place, and which weapon was used. Each player assumes the role of one of the six suspects and attempts to deduce the correct answer by strategically moving around a game board representing the rooms of a mansion and collecting clues about the circumstances of the murder from the other players.