A Jubensha Most Foul: Bringing a Chinese Murder Mystery to English Audiences

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A China-inspired murder-mystery game format that’s worth billions of dollars in Eastern markets is trying to find its place among Western players.

Murder mysteries are a popular form of media worldwide. Whether we're talking about novels like Agatha Christie or films like Knives Out, people love a good whodunnit. One format that this storytelling format has taken is murder mystery theatre; where audiences watch a story told before them and attempt to piece them together. It’s an experience that is intended to be immersive, but is usually designed to just have you involved as an audience member instead of a performer.

That's where "Jubensha” games come in. Jubensha, which means “scripted murder” in Chinese, is a roleplay-based murder-mystery format where (to put it simply) players are asked to assume a specific, scripted role within a mystery set before them. They have a very specific background, facts about their character. The players must collaborate to determine who the killer is by comparing clues, defining interpersonal relationships, and exploring exactly what happened. And if they’re the killer? Well, they'd better do all they can not get caught.

The origins of Jubensha are heavily inspired the board game Clue as well as murder mystery LARPs. The game saw a massive surge of interest in 2013 with the release of the hospital-themed board game Death Wears White, according to The World of Chinese. This was followed by Who's the Murderer, a 2016 reality television show in which celebrities team up to solve murders on TV, playing various roles. The notion of gathering with friends, becoming different people, and solving mysteries seemed to become a really popular concept among Chinese youth. So the Jubensha industry grew into a multi-billion-dollar industry within China that involves more than 30,000 cafes dedicated to Jubensha games, hundreds of games, and even vacation resorts dedicated to the hobby. It’s even bigger than the escape room trend, according to some estimates.

If you want a really good deep dive into this market, I recommend People Make Games' documentary, where Quinns (of Quinns Quest) does a super deep dive. It’s utterly fascinating.

What I’m specifically looking at is how some Eastern creators are trying to bring their games over to Western audiences.

 Suspense Studios, a Singapore-based English publisher of original Jubensha content run by its owners C and T, has been expanding into American markets. The Jubensha publisher has hosted games at PAX Unplugged and GenCon for the last two years and is selling multiple box sets for people to pick up and play at home.

But what’s it like to play a Jubensha game? Let me try to explain.

The Joy of In-Character Murder: My Experience With Jubensha

I received an invitation to PAX Unplugged to play in a Jubensha session hosted by Suspense Studio (this was a free media pass). The setting for the game (titled The Sandcastle) was simple: I was one of five friends invited to a mysterious island by a friend who had been missing for a while. One of the guests ends up murdered, and it’s up to the friends to figure out who through gathering clues, comparing schedules, and asking questions about alibis and your general analysis.

By the end of the game, it was revealed that I was the murderer…But not before I convinced everyone that I wasn’t. There was something so satisfying about being able to cover my tracks. The game felt deeper than Among Us or Secret Hitler, but not complicated enough that I couldn’t explain it to my mother.

The Sandcastle often felt similar to Glass Onion² due to the isolated nature of the island and how our characters were famous and wealthy. But that’s where the similarities disappeared. I won’t spoil any of the details of the mystery, as I think that you should experience the game for yourself if you get to go to a convention hosting the game in 2026.

I found the Jubensha game I played especially entrancing for two very unique reasons.

• Being part of the plot. While it is so fun to watch Benoit Blanc solve a murder and try to predict what happened, I found myself even more invested in the murder when I was one of the suspects myself. I felt my heart beat a little faster as the other players figured out the cause of death. I did my best to hide facts, to point fingers and to use every tool in my arsenal to protect myself. Even when I was playing at a table with total strangers, I could not help but feel so invested in my character's fate.

• The intentional vagueness of the script. The character scripts were handed out, and we started the session by reading only one part of the text, which gave us a limited view of who we were and our motives.We had to stick to the script's general framework. When we got to the murder-solving section of the story, I read the rest of the script and was given an extensive timeline of what I had done….but nowhere in the text did it explicitly say “I did the murder.” Instead, it left my role to my imagination about whether my actions caused the killing blow. About halfway through our discussions, I realized my role in the story and had to immediately prepare to lie and keep it cool.

By the end, I had a blast and was eager to try other Jubensha games.

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What Makes Jubensha Work

What does it take to make a Jubensha mystery work? There are two key factors that will help make the experience unforgettable (and might even be usable in your own mystery writing.)

The first is having memorable characters. “Characterization is quite important,” Suspense Studios co-owner C¹ told TTRPG Insider. “There are some people who write characters in a mystery who are not really relevant to the story. I could very easily eliminate them, or they all blend together, and you’re unable to differentiate them. Characterization is very important because that gives you the backstories.” I certainly noticed this in my own game, where it was hard not to compare my character with a certain well-known celebrity. That fact made the game even more memorable as well.

The other thing that really matters is the mystery's logic. Everything must make sense, and you can’t leave a lot of loopholes. This is especially important for the GM running a Jubensha game, who must tightly grip to the facts of the script they have, lest they create unintentional plot holes through lack of knowledge or unexpected improvisation. It’s a more railroad-esque approach compared to my own DMing style, which often relies heavily on improvisation when DMing for my table. A Jubensha story “needs to be foolproof,” C emphasized. “Because if a player has 10,000 questions at the end of the mystery, then that leaves a very bad taste coming up from a game.”

Suspense Studio’s box sets (Laboratory of Death and Secret Tribe) are written with both of these principles in mind. They are also designed for new Jubensha GMs to pick up and play with minimal preparation. The convention games, in contrast, are a bit more complicated but assume that they’re being run by someone who understands how this game works. The end-result still felt like such a blast, however.

While Jubensha games are far from a traditional TTRPG, they play on the same core values that bring us back to this hobby: intense storytelling, creativity, and getting around a table to play games. Will we see more of this find a home in the Western TTRPG and convention scene? It’s a bit too early to say, although convention attendees should keep an eye out for a chance to try it out for themselves.

Suspense Studios hopes to release additional Jubensha mysteries in the future and will continue to host games at conventions in English-speaking markets around the world. This includes the world’s first Jubensha-focused convention in London in May, that will be run by game designer Adrian Hon.

If players are excited to try this playstyle, the Laboratory of Death and Secret Tribe box sets are available on Suspense Studio’s website. The UK-based theatre company Chronic Insanity is also crowdfunding its own English-language Jubensha on Kickstarter right now!

What are your thoughts? Send any scoops, tips or press releases to [email protected].

1  C and his co-owner T asked to have their IRL names withheld for privacy reasons.

2  C and T deny that Glass Onion was a direct influence on this story. I also had Benoit Blanc on my brain while writing this due to WAKE UP DEAD MAN, which I adored.