Death in the Alps, Red Herring Games latest virtual weekend has just achieved full funding on Kickstarter and the team are stepping up their plans for hosting the event at the end of January, hoping for further sales in the last week of the crowdfunding campaign.

With money at an all time low, everyone is looking for something different to do that doesn’t cost the earth, and with the latest pandemic wave of Influenza A ripping through the population – a non-socialising social event is a sure fire winner!

The small independent UK based murder mystery company began arranging digital weekends in response to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns.

“We started in the Autumn of 2020.” Managing Director Jo Smedley said. “It all began during Covid, when people were forced to staycation. We had to cancel one of our physical weekends and rather than let everyone down, we created a unique weekend that ran fully virtually instead, giving people access to workshops and entertainment which they could access from the comfort of their own sofas.”

Virtual weekends have remained popular even post-lockdown. “I admit, it surprised us a little ” Said Joseph Parfrement Parkes who heads up the events team at the Grimsby based firm. “But we now start selling tickets through crowdfunding to ensure our overhead costs are covered before we commit to them, and we’ve yet to fail to get the funding we need to put them on.”

What remains the draw in a virtual weekend?

“I think it’s because they are just enormous fun,” Jo Smedley said. “We get so many repeat customers each time. Many guests have made friends through our virtual events and come back to rejoin the same teams.”

But with tickets are priced per household rather than per person, there is no doubt virtual murder mystery events are much more accessible to families and those on low incomes than traditional murder mysteries held in restaurants and hotels. Single tickets to a live event will cost around £40 per person, whereas the virtual weekends are the same price, and priced per screen means entire households can join in for an entire weekend of entertainment rather than a single meal price.

“Our last weekend was set in Hawaii,” Joseph said. “One household invited around all their friends and set up a tiki bar in the corner of their living room. It was like a party within a party and they all looked to be having a great time!”

Each weekend run by the entrepreneurial team has consistently attracted a global audience and a wide age range of guests from teenagers, to pensioners, and from Japan through to California!

This January the team are heading over to a Ski Resort in the Alps, where a terrible murder has created a rather unexpected situation on the slopes.

Like every other weekend the team has run, this one will be accompanied by a series of virtual experiences alongside the double bill murder mystery; from quizzes and escape rooms to dance workshops, cocktail classes and cook-alongs.

Visit https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/crime-time/death-in-the-alps-an-immersive-virtual-murder-mystery to find out more.