Hunt A Killer Review

Hunt A Killer is not a game, friends. It’s a captivating adventure that spans six entire months.

I love games, mysteries, and true crime. My husband loves figuring things out. Hunt A Killer is the perfect solution to a Saturday Date Night.

Don’t worry, this Hunt A Killer review is spoiler-free (except for mild spoiler images).

Hunt A Killer is an entertainment industry infant, born a mere four years ago in 2016. What began as an in-person interactive weekend-long experience morphed into immersive mystery tales delivered to your door each month. 

Pretty cool way to follow your dream from day camp to detective, right?

Hunt A Killer is a subscription-based experience that puts you in charge of solving a crime. Once a month, you receive a new box filled with information, clues, and evidence. Each box is an “episode.” Each episode includes a case file and clues, leading you to a unique arc in the story.

Each month, episodes present more information for you to find. During the season finale, you’ll uncover the entire plot assembled from your past month’s boxes.  Hunt A Killer is a serialized experience. You’ll need a full six-month subscription to make it to the season finale.If you’re patient and enjoy the slow burn of a true-crime murder mystery TV series or podcast, you’ll have a lot of fun with each new episode.

Hunt A Killer: New Season

Among lives adorned with Art Deco kitchen appliances and the misery of the Great Depression, America was filled with bingo nights, chain letters, and live entertainment to buffer the sadness. And a theater is where Hunt A Killer’s newest season begins.

In this first episode, dubbed Curtain Call, you’re reopening a cold case from the 1930s. A mummified body is found inside an old trunk. It’s up to you to follow the breadcrumbs to figure out the who, what, why, and how.

Your first assignment is to uncover the murder weapon.

And that’s just what we did last Saturday.

We cleared the dining room table, turned on all the lights, and prepared ourselves with beers and monocles. We carefully opened our box of goodies to find a neatly packaged and well-organized episode to begin the game.

What We Loved

The instructions are clear from the moment you open the box. You receive a small booklet explaining how to begin your investigation, and where you can find help should you need it. Also included was a checklist.

You’re encouraged to join their Facebook group and forum discussions, and the community is helpful and enthusiastic. There’s even a dedicated subreddit you can join. Beware, you may find spoilers if you go looking before the series finale.

You’ll dig Hunt A Killer, especially if you enjoy alternate reality games (ARGs). If you dig Tik Tok videos or Twitter threads that toss you into the “this is not a game” aesthetic, you’ll love getting your hands on these boxes and rifling through a stack of evidence. The documents look and feel authentic, even knowing they are mass-produced. I was even worried about smudging the ink on the “handwritten” notes.

The story is engaging and entertaining, and the clues are intriguing from the start while still clearly holding back its real significance for future episodes.

Uniquely, Hunt A Killer eases in beginner detectives with immersive multimedia puzzle-solving by placing the rest of the evidence on a virtual desktop inside a password-protected folder. You’re required to look beyond the box of clues, checking things out online, and rely on your own outside knowledge and common sense.

There are physical items included that could potentially help you solve the crime, or they could be red herrings meant to lead you astray. Only a few key pieces of information point you in the right direction. These clues come in the form of codes, ciphers, puzzles, autopsy reports, and more.We also love that Hunt A Killer donates some of their profits to Cold Case Foundation, an organization “dedicated to stopping the deadly compounding effect of cold cases and providing hope and resources to families affected by violent crime.”

What We Didn’t Love (But Didn’t Hate)

Curtain Call is more documents-based than physical evidence. Be prepared to read a lot. Like, A LOT A LOT. This isn’t a negative for us at all. We love reading, and we actually sat in silence for the first 15 minutes as we both read everything through the first time.

However, this could be a drawback for players who want to jump in and start parsing through crime scene photos and the physical tokens included. This also limits the age range of players. However, for two adults who love reading, this isn’t a downside.

Depending on your gumshoe capabilities, you can solve the mystery of the first box relatively quickly. After some intense reading and discussing a few possibilities as we learned about each suspect, we came to the same conclusion in less than an hour. This is beneficial for someone who wants to see what it’s all about but doesn’t want to clear their entire afternoon to slog through hints and codes.

Don’t even consider instant gratification while you attempt to solve this crime. If you’re someone with little patience for a slow-burn murder mystery, it might be frustrating to wait an entire month before getting the next episode. I personally don’t love that aspect of the subscription because I am a binge consumer.

The good news is that you can expedite each episode as you complete the monthly tasks. They also have premium cases that are all-in-one experiences, solvable in one session. If you aren’t ready to commit to a six-episode project but still want to play detective, this is the best solution.

Keep in mind that if you don’t finish an entire season, you’ll find yourself with a lot of loose threads and no real ending.

Are You Considering Subscribing to Hunt A Killer?

A season pass, their most popular membership plan, will cost you $27.50 per month, along with free shipping (which is good, because you never know what kind of evidence will pop up at your door.) Also included in this package is their exclusive Killer Cocktails set, comprised of a recipe book and two Detective Juice Moscow Mule cups.

If the 1930s-era theatre mystery isn’t your speed, no worries. You can cancel anytime, so no one is locked into an entire series. You can also pause your subscription or purchase a membership as a gift for the investigator wannabe in your life.

If you really want to dive headfirst into the spectacle, you can nab Hunt A Killer’s Murder Board kit to take your investigation to the next level.

Tell me what you think in the comments below. Are you thinking about giving it a go? If so, use our exclusive Hunt A Killer Review code GEEKTRAVEL for 20% off the first box. Have you already tried it? I’d love to hear from you!

This article uses affiliate links so the GTG team earns a little bit of cash if you buy through the links. Thanks for helping to keep our site running and our writers caffeinated.