Mystery games are a fantastic way to develop deductive reasoning and problem-solving skills while encouraging your kids’ cooperation, organization abilities, and communication skills. This collection of thrilling murder mysteries, escape room challenges, and popular board games is sure to become a welcome addition to any family game night! So find your magnifying glass, throw on your trench coat, and get ready for our list of enthralling mystery games for kids of all ages!
1. Detective Mystery Party Game
This mystery-style game is not based on murder but on the premise that a thief has gotten a hold of party goods! Your kids are sure to have plenty of fun figuring out the real culprit among the five suspects and getting their party supplies back!
Age Group: Elementary, Middle School
Learn More: Queen Of Theme Party Games
2. Find The Secret Message Printable Puzzle Game
This printable puzzle game challenges your kids to use their reasoning skills to decode and unscramble a sentence in order to claim their hidden prize from a drawer. Be prepared to hide something in that drawer for them to find!
Age Group: Elementary
Learn More: Blimey Box
3. Interactive Mystery Series
This series of printable interactive mysteries is sure to create a suspenseful mood! These engaging mystery-themed stories guide your little detectives on a clue hunt around the classroom. Each kit includes plenty of coloring pages, activities, and games to keep players entertained while developing their critical reasoning skills.
Age Group: Elementary, Middle School
Learn More: Tiny Mysteries Inc.
4. Detective Theme Topper
This illustrated detective mystery game contains ten clues that your children must solve in order to nab the true culprit. It includes colorful item cards featuring suspect files, certificates, and even a detective notebook that will get them excited about sleuthing!
Age Group: Elementary, Middle School
Learn More: Printable Adventure Games
5. Cooperative Whodunit Game
Get your little spies ready for this engaging mystery game! This exciting whodunit combines decisive reasoning and visual perception skills to have them solve a detective fingerprint puzzle. Think about using this as a team challenge to really get your kids excited!
Age Group: Elementary, Middle School
Learn More: Growing Play
6. Fun Detective Game
Your kids will love pretending to be a real-life Sherlock Holmes while completing this top-secret mission. This difficult challenge requires them to pay close attention and use those problem-solving skills! This one is sure to put their budding critical reasoning skills to the test!
Age Group: Elementary, Middle School
Learn More: Growing Play
7. Classic Murder Mystery Board Game
No list of mystery games would be complete without Clue! This original murder mystery board game has been a family favorite for decades and it works just as well in school too! Featuring six game markers, various weapons, and challenge cards, it’s the perfect game for your older students to develop deductive reasoning skills.
Age Group: Elementary, Middle School, Highschool
Learn More: Ultra Board Games
8. Mystery Games For Rainy Days
This mystery rainy day activity features secret messages, fingerprint analysis, logic puzzles, and a fun invisible message for your spy kids to decipher. This is a great bundle to teach deductive reasoning skills while weaving a little cipher history into the fun – your children will love it!
Age Group: Elementary
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
9. Mystery at the Lux Museum
Your kids are sure to love solving the clues for this escape room-inspired, mystery game, Mystery at the Lux Museum. Featuring maps and museum guides as well as pictures and ciphers, this game is full of difficult challenges and is perfect for an end-of-term fun day!
Age Group: Elementary, Middle School
Learn More: Board Game Geek
10. Who Murdered the Gingerbread Man?
This drama-inspired mystery story features a series of clues, detailed character descriptions, and a detective checklist. This is a perfect interactive role-playing game that is sure to ignite the interest of both your budding actors and your up-and-coming detectives! What a fun and interesting way to bring drama into your classroom curriculum!
Age Group: Elementary
Learn More: Drama Notebook
11. Educational Escape Room Game
This escape game challenges your kids to use their math and map skills to eliminate suspects to identify the guilty culprits of this mystery! It’s an educational game with a fun twist that emphasizes collaboration and teamwork! Can your kiddos figure their way out?
Age Group: Elementary
Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers
12. Cat Crimes Logic Game For Kids
This award-winning mystery game is a great way for your kids to develop logical thinking and deductive reasoning skills! With increasingly tougher puzzles, your little sleuths will be working on their problem-solving and thinking skills while having loads of fun with this amusing game!
Age Group: Elementary, Middle School
Learn More: Amazon
13. Make Your Own Escape Room Game
This DIY Escape Room guide is a great budget-friendly alternative to a pricey real-world escape room. It shows you how to identify a topic that will work and how to create your own set of challenging logic puzzles for what will surely be an engaging activity for your students!
Age Group: Elementary, Middle School
Learn More: Learning Hypothesis
14. Play Scotland Yard
Scotland Yard is renowned in the worlds of both real and fictional detectives! This classic mystery game shares a name with the police headquarters building and is perfect for your true crime enthusiasts! This board game is for three to six people and challenges players to track down Mr. X as he darts and dodges around the city of London.
Age Group: Elementary, Middle School
Learn More: Amazon
15. Top Secret Spy Mission
This fun spy game is the perfect excuse to let your kids really dress the part by donning hats, sunglasses, and other spy apparel to make this game even more fun! They’ll lose themselves in their secret agent roles as they work to solve ten clues to reclaim their stolen candy from a group of thieves!
Age Group: Elementary, Middle School
Learn More: Funtastic Idea
16. Ancient Egypt-Themed Mystery Game
This hands-on CSI-style game challenges kids to examine archeological and modern-day DNA evidence to solve the enduring mystery of King Tut’s death. It’s the perfect mystery to instill a love of history and science into your kids as they grapple with the question – was King Tut murdered?
Age Group: Elementary, Middle School, Highschool
Learn More: 123 Homeschool 4 Me
17. Spy School Activities
Chances are, your kids will be thrilled by the idea of going to spy school! This fun kit comes complete with ID cards and includes loads of engaging DIY spy school activities. They are sure to love completing their training missions and earning their Secret Spy School badges!
Age Group: Elementary
Learn More: Coffee Cups And Crayons
18. Plan A Classroom Crime Scene
This hands-on classroom activity is the perfect way to put inference skills to the test in an exciting way! Your students will love participating in this crime scene set up to solve an engaging mystery while also strengthening their reading comprehension skills.
Age Group: Elementary
Learn More: Poet Prints
19. Solve a Series of Mysteries
This series of seven inventive missions is another great opportunity to let your kids dress the part of super sleuths! This activity includes lock boxes, invisible ink, and a homemade laser maze and is sure to keep your kids engrossed in detective work for hours!
Age Group: Elementary
Learn More: Exploring Domesticity
20. Who Killed Miss Greenspoon?
Everyone’s having a grand ol’ time at their high school reunion until suddenly… “AHHHH!” A woman’s piercing shriek echoes throughout the gymnasium before the lifeless body of elderly Miss Greenspoon is discovered. Who killed this beloved teacher? Your older students will have a blast solving this mystery!
Age Group: Middle School, High School
Learn More: ESL Writing
21. Junior Detective
This board game comes with dozens of mysteries for your kiddos to solve! Not only are these tasks entertaining, but the game will also help them strengthen their deductive reasoning skills! Out of twelve suspicious-looking faces, your young detectives must race to find the true culprit!
Age Group: Elementary, Middle
Learn More: Casual Game Revolution
22. Guilty Party
If you have a Wii, then plug it in and get ready for a whodunnit-style adventure! Let your kids play for the chance to take over the family business – the detective business, that is! Who will impress Commodore and secure access to his top secret folder of unsolved cases?
Age Group: Elementary, Middle, High School
Learn More: Disney Fandom
23. Spy Museum
These activities come straight from the Spy Museum! Don’t worry if you can’t make it there in person; their amazing resources include loads of ideas that you can do right from your classroom! From making invisible ink to cracking top secret codes your kids will love playing these spy games!
Age Group: Elementary, Middle School
Learn More: Spy Museum
24. DNA Profiling
Bring some STEM into the mystery mix by giving your kids the opportunity to use their DNA profiling skills to find the unknown bank robbery suspect! This activity is aligned with the NGSS and Common Core standards and is sure to inspire budding forensic scientists and detectives everywhere!
Age Group: Middle School
Learn More: Teach Engineering
25. Mafia
This classic game holds a special place in the hearts of many kids and adults alike! Not many people know that there are versions of this game both with and without a deck of cards! Mafia are infesting the town and it is up to the sheriff to remove each nefarious member from the game before all the civilians are gone. Are your sheriffs up to the task?
Age Group: Middle School, High School
Learn More: Instructables
26. The Pilfered Quill
This is another escape room mystery game that is perfect for the classroom! Get ready to strengthen your kids’ literacy and problem-solving skills with this fun and educational activity. Have your kids work in teams to crack secret codes, solve puzzles, and escape tricky mazes. How a-MAZE-ing!
Age Group: Elementary School, Middle School
Learn More: Reading Schools
27. DNA Evidence
Here’s another DNA-themed spy game! Challenge your learners to build a DNA structure then create a duplicate. Each player will take turns hiding one of their DNA structures and give the others clues about where it’s hidden in the classroom. Whoever guesses its exact location gets to go next!
Age Group: Elementary
Learn More: Love to Know
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