About us

How this all began

Grave Situations started from a love of writing and community.

Founder Nicolette was asked by her flatmate and good friend, Danielle, to host her birthday murder mystery in 2021. It was your classic 1920s flapper mystery from an online printable kit. It was fine, but Nicolette knew it needed something extra.

So Nicolette redesigned all the printable materials for the party and added layers, like having a friend in character (the PONZI POLICE, tag line "We work for our money") check IDs (and take bribes of sweets) at the door. 

This started a lifelong passion.

The next murder mystery party written for a friend was 'Alma.' And this time, despite being dyslexic, it was fully written by Nicolette and took over 200 hours to create. Not only was the whole storyline and ALL the drama constructed meticulously by Nicolette, but it was also Nicolette's new concept to combine murder mysteries with escape room type puzzles.

The party 'Alma' has since been streamlined, perfected, and redesigned three more times and is the first party Grave Situations runs commercially, now called 'The Good Ship Kōhuru.' It's had well over 500 hours of development and testing before its public release, and it's something she's extremely proud of.

Nicolette has been writing and testing new parties roughly every six months since 2021 and didn't consider it as a business idea until she moved to London in August 2025.

Coming from Wellington, New Zealand, to London, England, was a big change and offered a great opportunity to start opening her parties to the public.

Before Nicolette started Grave Situations, she worked as an On Set VFX Data Wrangler and Supervisor on movies and TV, such as Wolfman (Dir. Leigh Whannel, Blumhouse), Avatar: Fire and Ash (Dir. James Cameron, 20th Century), Sweet Tooth (Dir. Toa Fraser et al., Netflix), Chief of War (Dir. Jason Mamoa et al., Apple TV), and many others.

The amazing crew on these projects has inspired the techniques used in the art direction and design of mysteries. Nicolette still works in film and TV in between writing and running these parties.

Grave Situations takes a firm stance against the use of AI. There was no AI used in the creation of 'The Good Ship Kōhuru' or any other party. We believe creativity is something only humans can do.