Inside Suspense Studio: Designing Jubensha （剧本杀） for English-Speaking Players
- Angel Poh
- 6 days ago
- 5 min read
What started as curiosity about East Asia’s Jubensha (剧本杀） craze became a mission at Suspense Studio. Read on to see how they began designing immersive, story-driven murder mysteries for English-speaking players.
Q: Can you give a short introduction to Suspense Studio and explain what inspired you to start designing Jubensha （剧本杀）games, as well as briefly describe what a Jubensha game is for readers who might be unfamiliar?
Suspense Studio (KMS Games) is an original English ‘Jubensha’ murder mystery social deduction game creator, which started in 2021, based on the ‘Jubensha’ craze in East Asia. Designed in Singapore, our games involve players roleplaying as murder suspects and working together to analyse evidence and deduce the murderer hidden amongst them.
Jubensha - 剧本杀 (literally translated to script murder) is the hottest entertainment and social activity for youths in East Asia. It is an adaptation of Western murder mystery dinner parties and popularised by the Korean show Crime Scene and the Chinese show Who's the Murderer. It involves a group of players roleplaying as detectives and/or suspects in a crime scene to deduce who the murderer is amongst them.
Q: How do your Jubensha games differ from traditional murder mystery games in the UK, and what makes your Jubensha games unique compared to the versions commonly found in China? Are there particular themes, mechanics, or storytelling approaches that set them apart?
Compared to traditional Western murder mystery dinner party games, Jubensha involves more complex storytelling and more rigorous logical deduction. Every player has their own unique backstory and will play a key role in the crime solving process, making the experience thoroughly immersive for everyone involved.
At Suspense Studio, we create original games dedicated to the English-speaking community. The language, theme and storytelling are customised to allow English-speaking players to enjoy Jubensha without facing hindrance from language or culture barriers in Chinese Jubensha. Our games are generally beginner friendly to enable new players to grasp the game mechanics easily, most of the time even without the need for a game master.
Q: Since starting Suspense Studio, what has been the most surprising lesson about designing social deduction games?
After hosting our games for many players across the world, we realised there exists a huge range of playstyles for social deduction games. Within the Jubensha community, there are players fascinated by complex logical deduction, and also those who seek the most enjoyment from role-playing and embodying their characters. This diversity provides
both opportunities and challenges for game creators.
Q: What has been the most challenging part of creating original Jubensha games, and how did the team overcome it?
As our target audience is the English-speaking community who have little to no prior exposure to Jubensha, the biggest challenge when we started was finding ways to introduce this genre to our audiences and making the game accessible to first-time players. We try to overcome this challenge by creating play-at-home boxed games with clear game flow and easy-to-follow instructions. This lowers the barriers to entry to Jubensha as interested players can play our games with their friends and family without needing a dedicated shop or game master.
Q: How do player interactions and feedback shape the way the team approaches designing new scenarios or mechanics?
We hope our games are fun and meaningful. Through engrossing themselves in the world of storytelling and logical deduction, we hope players can also leave with a new perspective or insight that they gleaned from the experience. In our game ‘Melody of Waves’ which has been filmed and released as a Youtube miniseries, we explored themes of terrorism and climate change through deducing the murder of a CEO of a climate research organisation. When hosting limited public runs for this game, many players fed back to us that they were hooked by the intriguing murder mystery, but left the game feeling satisfied not only from solving the crime, but also from experiencing how these real world issues affect them through their respective character’s point of view.
Q: How do you make sure your games stay engaging and enjoyable for players over multiple sessions?
Unlike traditional board games which can be replayed with the same players, each Jubensha game is unique and unreplicable. Hence, we strive to make each game experience memorable and meaningful. When designing game characters, we would map out detailed backstories to provide players with characters that are distinct, alive and exciting to role-play as. Take for example our game ‘Secret Tribe’ - we started by envisioning and crafting a completely unique community isolated from modern society, detailing its own customs, rules, hierarchy and historical events. From there, we created characters who are members of this tribe, each with a distinct role in the community. When crafting puzzles and mysteries, we seek to provide enough complexity that enables a stimulating deductive process, while ensuring each revelation provides sufficient surprise and fulfilment to players. This is akin to reading a detective novel, just that you get to live out the story and decide its progression! We hope to retain players through these premium immersive crime-solving experiences so players would look forward to our newest releases!
Q: What kind of experiences or takeaways do you hope players have when they play your games?
We hope our games are fun and meaningful. Through engrossing themselves in the world of storytelling and logical deduction, we hope players can also leave with a new perspective or insight that they gleaned from the experience. In our game ‘Melody of Waves’ which has been filmed and released as a Youtube miniseries, we explored themes of terrorism and climate change through deducing the murder of a CEO of a climate research organisation. When hosting limited public runs for this game, many players fed back to us that they were hooked by the intriguing murder mystery, but left the game feeling satisfied not only from solving the crime, but also from experiencing how these real world issues affect them through their respective character’s point of view.
Q: What have been the most memorable experiences or surprises you’ve had while showcasing your games at exhibitions?
We had typically been more nervous when hosting games for groups of completely new players to Jubensha. However, we were pleasantly surprised by many groups of new players who grasped the essence of Jubensha very quickly and ended up becoming one of the most engrossed groups of the day. In Gen Con 2025, we hosted ‘The Sandcastle’ which is a relatively more complex Jubensha than our boxed games. Several groups of completely new players shocked our GMs as they were able to progress through the stages of deduction way ahead of planned timings and the first-time “murderers” employed very creative and clever techniques to cast suspicion away from them. Ultimately, we concluded that Jubensha is a genre that can be enjoyed by anyone who has a passion for role-playing and an interest in logical deduction!
Q: Looking ahead, what can players and readers expect from Suspense Studio in the next few years, and do you have plans to expand into digital formats or apps, or will your games remain primarily tabletop experiences?
We will continue to create original English Jubensha games which are fun and engaging. As more people in the English-speaking community learn about Jubensha, we will slowly expand into a larger variety of mediums and formats to make Jubensha more accessible and more exciting. Stay tuned to what we do next!
Q: For readers interested in Suspense Studio, where can they find your games and keep updated on releases or events?
They can find our games on our website www.suspensestudiogames.com where we ship internationally, and stay up to date by subscribing to our mailing list, joining our discord group or following us on Instagram @Suspense Studio.
