I was young and stupid in the early 90s. I had a lot of really cool collectibles and comics, but I also did not have much money. So I did what I’ve had to do a couple of times since – I sold off much of my collection. My complete run of McFarlane’s Spider-Man? Sold, for about 1/10th what they would eventually be worth. My run of Doctor Who toys from Dapol? Again, sold for a lot less than they are now fetching on eBay. An two-foot tall Robby the Robot, imported from Japan? Sold, and for a lot less than $300 it goes for today.
But one item I sold (for about twice what I paid for it) haunted me. It was one of the first items released to tie-in with the hottest show to debut in years. That show was Twin Peaks. And the item was the Twin Peaks: Murder Mystery Board Game.
Yes, fellow Peaks fans, they actually released a board game based on the show. Paul Lamond Games, based out of England, made it and it is AMAZING. Released inbetween the first and second seasons, the point of the game is to (of course) find out who killed Laura Palmer. You do so by – I’m not making this up – gathering pieces to form a pentagram, “trapping” the killer. Here’s an excerpt of a review, from Board Game Geek:
Inside the box, there’s a rule booklet, a game board, two dice (one regular, one poker), 6 coloured pawns, a deck of 50 suspect clue cards, a plastic arrow spinner (that attaches to the centre of the board), a perforated cardboard sheet of 30 pentagram pieces and 75 “donut” counters.
This is a “Murder Mystery Game” for 4 to 6 players. Your goal is to identify Laura Palmer’s killer and trap them. To achieve this, you must accomplish the following: collect 12 donuts; collect the five pieces of the Pentagram Deathtrap; collect four suspect clue cards, all bearing the same suspect name but also bearing identical poker suits or one of each suit.
Set in the town of Twin Peaks, the game board consists of a fairly simple track around which you move your playing pieces at the throw of a die. There’s the familiar picture of the road into Twin Peaks in the centre of the board, with photos of the log, two doughnuts (thought I’d get the correct spelling in somewhere) and a slice of cherry pie in three corners. The rest of the artwork is basic, looking like clipart. Most squares contain said clipart, a reference to an event or location from the series and an instruction (“Roll again”, “Miss a turn”, “Go to [particular square]”, “Collect/Lose [some] donuts”, “Draw/Exchange clue card”).
All 4-6 players are taking their turn to collect donut counters, clue cards and pentagram pieces. Get what you need, and you’ve won. So what’s with the spinner in the middle of the board? Ah yes, the dream-speaking part of the game, a reference to the Waiting Room from the series, where certain characters have stilted speech because, although they’re speaking forwards, the actors have been recorded speaking backwards…or something like that.
Now don’t get too excited. If you are sent to the dream-speaking square, or land on it, you spin the spinner, giving you a number from one to six (or rather, I to VI, otherwise you could have just used the die…). Now your choice of pawn colour becomes “relevant”, as each piece has a different page in the instructions to look up (I can sense your excitement building at this point…squash it now). There, the player will find six sentences that include a phrase written backwards. While another player counts from 1 to 10, the current player must unravel the sentence indicated by the spinner. If they fail, next go they must spin the spinner and try again. If they succeed, they follow the instructions that follow the mystery sentence.
Yes, they even have a part of the game where you have to read clues backwards. The reviewer didn’t think it was much fun… And he has a point. The game is not that interesting, and I played it a few times before selling it.
I have searched eBay for YEARS trying to find this game again (I have the distinct impression they did not make a lot of them, and the copies that they did make were quickly snatched up by super-fans. I also suspect (though I don’t know for sure) that this game was NOT formally approved by David Lynch and Mark Frost, and when they saw the pentagram stuff they probably stopped production of the game.
Well, my search is at an end. I have finally acquired a replacement copy of the game I foolishly sold off in 1992. Here it is!!
So, yeah… I’m quite happy. My own personal “White Whale” of Peaks collecting is now mine once more. Now to search eBay for that Robby the Robot…
UPDATE: Looks like my earlier guess that Lynch and Frost pulled the product was incorrect. Chatted with Peaks co-creator Mark Frost about this on Twitter:
I approved a prototype, never saw the finished product. https://t.co/Q7fY0BFGoW
— Mark Frost (@mfrost11) September 17, 2019
They must not have made a lot of copies, because the game is rarer than hen’s teeth.