About

Hi! I'm Manuel, a game designer from Montreal.

A few years ago, I used to solve a lot of logic puzzles with my wife Cindy, or rather against her, to see who was fastest. Our favourite was the Battleship logic puzzle, where you place ships of specific sizes on a grid. The concept of placing specific elements onto a spatial grid really stuck with me.

I created Murdoku in 2020, at first just for Cindy and a few friends: they were instantly hooked, so I kept making more and improving them. Back then, it was called "murder mystery puzzle". In hindsight, that wasn't the greatest name.

The first cases went up as free printables on my site and the game slowly grew in popularity. My puzzles started appearing in the Financial Times, and Francis Heaney, chief editor at Puzzlewright Press, found the game online and thought it had potential as a book.

Since then, Murdoku has grown a lot: there's an online game, more printable puzzles, and the first Murdoku book came out in 2025 with Union Square & Co. in North America. In less than a year, Volume 1 became a USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller, and is now published in 15 languages. Volume 2 soon followed, Volumes 3 and 4 are on their way, and Cindy, all these years later, is still my number one fan and the first person to test every case.

And there's still so much more ahead for this game. Thanks for being here for the ride.