OC HIGH: STUDENT NEWS AND VIEWS : BOARD, NOT BORED : Can a generation raised on electronics find excitement in board games? Two groups of teens play along to find out.

Game: How to Host a Teen Mystery: Hot Times at Hollywood High

Cost: From $25 to $30

For: Eight players

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How would you like to accuse your best friends of malicious pyromania and thievery--without harming the friendship?

If this sounds like a fantasy come true, consider playing the game How to Host a Teen Mystery: Hot Times at Hollywood High.

Teen Mystery allows you to become part of a fictitious police investigation of eight high school students under suspicion for arson and theft.

I was a hostess to the mystery, and it was quite an experience. It combines theatrics with traditional game-playing.

As the game began, my seven guests (all students at Santiago High School in Garden Grove) and I had been invited to a banquet to celebrate our membership into Hollywood High’s “Most Likely” Club at the Hardest Rock Cafeteria.

In the scenario, Hollywood High has had a string of problems that day. First, the science lab has burned down, leaving teacher Miss Terri Daktill unconscious and the school mascot, Murray the Mink, missing (possibly toasted to a crisp, but the body has not been found).

On top of that, someone has broken into Principal Cy Kopath’s safe and stolen the test answers to the Meaningless Aptitude Test (MATs).

All of the characters are aware of the facts, and one of them is guilty.

The objective is to find the culprit. This is where the game is different: My guests and I took the roles of the characters in the game so that we could find the guilty party.

I became Bernadette Down, an up-and-coming genius artist. Strange, aloof and distant from the other students, I was voted “Most Likely to Hang” (like in a museum).

Chris Brown, 18, became Spence DeMonet, the handsome and rich student body president voted “Most Likely to Own California.” Tock Phengthirath, 16, played his girlfriend, Juanita Greencard. Beautiful daughter of a Colombian importer, she is voted “Most Likely to Rule a Small Country.”

Tien Nguyen, 17, became cheerleader and Hollywood socialite Chantella Solle, the daughter of a movie mogul; she’s been voted “Most Likely to Sign Autographs” (whether people wanted them or not). Her boyfriend is Cameron Kordier, who was played by Jesse Cook, 16. Kordier is a budding young film director voted “Most Likely to Be Snubbed at the Oscars.”

Ryan Grey, 15, became Duncan Flushwater, a computer genius and math wiz who just received a popularity make-over. “Flushie” was voted “Most Likely to Warp.” Halim Nguyen, 16, became Tanya Bunsoff, a gorgeous, but intelligent, “beach goddess” who practically lives at the beach. She was voted “Most Likely to be Worshiped From Afar.”

The last suspect was Fletcher Bysepp, who was played by Sean Grey, 17. “Flex” is a football star voted “Most Likely to Sweat Professionally.”

And now to the game.

Each guest is given a booklet with information only that character can see. It is filled with gossip, questions about the other characters and comeback phrases that can be used when another player tries to lay the rap on you. The players accuse each other of the crime in order to curtail any interrogation of themselves. When you are questioned by the others, however, you cannot lie about your character’s Hidden Truth, even if the allegation puts you in jeopardy.

So how did it go?

“The game is different from most other games,” Cook said. “You’re not just rolling dice and moving little pieces on a board. You’re accusing other people and defending yourself as though you were on trial.”

“I was playing the role of suspect and detective,” Nguyen said.

The game was fun in the sense that we all tried to accuse each other in order to save our own hides. But fun doesn’t mean that Teen Mystery is a perfect game.

The major flaw is that the players don’t know enough about their own characters to defend themselves properly. My character might be asked a question, for example, that seems connected to the plot, but I don’t know how to answer it. This slows down the game, causing annoying little pauses here and there. And the game didn’t provide enough information about the plot to spur good use of the gossip supplied about characters.

All the characters were supposed to be suspects, but the questions didn’t focus on all the players. Some players had to field many accusations, while others only had one or two questions tossed their way in each of the game’s four rounds.

“I felt my role was boring because I didn’t have much to do with anything,” Phengthirath said. “I wasn’t accused or questioned by anyone that much. I was just mentioned here and there.”

After four rounds of questioning and accusations, everyone gets a chance to say who they think is the culprit and why, before reading the supplied solution. I thought the group discussion of who-done-it was more plausible than the solution that came with the game.

“The solution was unreasonable and impossible for anyone to figure out,” Ryan Grey said. “The game gives its characters corny names, and they expect those characters to find the guy who did it by their reasoning.”

Because the game contains a solution, that means it can only be played once by the same group--unless they wait until they forget who did it. And, while the game is fun in an unconventional sense, the price ($25 to $30) is steep for a one-shot deal.