My Puzzling Year

After playing this series in 2021 and loving it, unforgiveably perhaps I skipped two years -- the first skip was because of being influenced by criticism online of a mistake in the packaging (which really I should've just disregarded entirely), the second skip because of trying something different, which I've covered elsewhere and was frankly total rubbish. So back to EXIT and this year's offering -- and this is a preview rather than a solving review, because I wanted to show the product before I'd done anything to it.  I fully expect that at the end the same four pictures will look somewhat different, due to being cut/broken/torn/defaced in some manner. Front box cover -- what here will be useful in the days ahead?   Back cover now -- looks like a couple of things here might come into play: When opened, inside top lid -- this looks like a feast of opportunities for future days, some of this will seriously come into play in a big way: The meat of the action, the box its...

  Saw this on a special offer at Alley Cat Games with another Unfold product plus the Demo game and things got off to a terrible start with the Demo....bring a torch and a magnifying glass is all I will say about that. This one is the proper full-sized product -- although it's not big, maybe hovering between A5 and A6 -- and it's one of those products I can admire the execution and design and be left totally cold by the narrative and the puzzling experience itself. The concept is you basically unfold the thing, each two page spread having some text and a puzzle, ostensibly telling a story of you doing something -- in this case, breaking into a pyramid to free your loved one who is destined to be sacrificed. The puzzles sometimes involve items tucked into the product, I did enjoy building a little pyramid, I liked the bead puzzle (although it was terribly easy), I hated the amulet puzzle (which was terribly unintuitive and didn't make sense as to what to do even with the hin...

  It's taken us a while to finish this; myself and my eight-year old son did two of this three-pack in the last school holiday, then we sort of ran out of time and parked it -- to be brutally honest I was actually leaving doing the third one until he asked about it, to make sure he actually wanted to do it rather than be railroaded by Dad into it. This morning -- start of the next school holidays -- he looks up from his breakfast and says "Dad, can I do the puzzle game thing?" -- he wanted to do it himself. No Dad involved. He's just finished it and had an absolute blast, I only needed to give advice in a couple of small places. It's quite a straightforward game, the signposting is excellent, it's always clear what the next step is and which piece of content needs to be used to solve the puzzle. There's a useful chatbot involved which gives hints subtlely based on your inputs -- so if you're close but not there it knows where to focus you, but doesn...

  Finally got around to this after ahemahem years - didn’t even open it up before. You get four chapters in four A4 envelopes plus an intro letter and a Christmas tree to slot together. It’s very structured in approach, very clear what you have to do in what order - this picture is the first puzzle, I had to follow a few pictures to work out how to thread the ribbon through the tree and you line up symbols on the ribbon with symbols on the holes and decode to form a password to the next stage. The second puzzle I had a lot of trouble with - it’s essentially a logic puzzle, a few letters and postcards and a bunch of guest lists and you have to work out which guest list is the one you want- however one letter breaks the puzzle and I don’t know why - so anyone who has played this and remembers this bit or can dig it out please drop me a line and I’ll spoil what I think is wrong. Puzzle three in chapter one is good fun, no controversy there!  The absolute peak of this for me w...

  It has taken me somewhat longer than anticipated to get around to this second case after Albrecht Manor, and this time, instead of letters we get a few photographs (which are a little dark and really would've benefited from a lighter print), a short diary (always love this sort of stuff) and a bundle of papers containing the results of various investigations, telephone calls, and reports. The story is darker than the previous product, and every step you take moves you closer to the inevitable conclusion -- but what is important to note is you do not get any form of resolution in the package itself, that comes in response to a report you email in via their website. So it falls a little between two stools -- if we are going to have a purely offline product (with phone calls and video footage represented by reports) then don't have the finale done purely online! Similarly, if you want to have an online component, then put some key information online -- I want to hear that phone ...

  This has been hidden away in the pile of shame for quite a long time now, perhaps even a couple of years, because I think I heard bad things about the series and just didn't feel motivated enough to try to overcome that. However, today I was putting other cases away and spotted this and thought it might be nice to get it done in my lunch hour and... ...it was surprisingly good fun. Nice clear signposting, nice and clear about what questions had to be answered, all the clues were there spread around various documents and interviews. Perhaps a mite too easy, as I honed in on the murderer in very short order and the last bits of evidence just reaffirmed that, but this might be because all the really incriminating stuff came at the end of the pack rather than sprinkled throughout (and thereby giving one time to forget a key piece of evidence). However, I did enjoy it, and it wasn't too pricey so...win-win.

  Thoroughly enjoyed this one - fairly easy I would say, it‘s a logical path to solve without it being heavy handed in signposting what to do next. Great immersive components and a lovely solid decoder wheel, three locks to open and a bunch of websites to find passwords for.

  Fourth in the Cold Case series yet only the second one I've played -- I liked A Story To Die For and picked up this one which took forever to arrive but turned up yesterday so it jumped to the top of the list. Lots of paper bits and bobs to work through, a good range of different styles and paper stocks -- railway tickets, a timetable, couple of newspaper articles, different police interviews and other documents. It's really a good example of how to put these things together, and just reaffirms to me that I dislike those products that are just a bunch of sheets of laser-printed A4s. You have four questions to answer to fully solve the case, answers go online into a multiple choice system which plenty of options -- pleased that I didn't need hints here, so it's a fairly cosy solve I would say. Nothing needs to be written on or torn up or folded, so it's eminently sellable after use too.

  This is the third of their four Cold Case products and they are now rocking at three-for-three. Again a good range of documents to go through, varying styles and paper stocks, leaflets, tickets, the whole nine yards, and three clearly stated questions to answer up front -- nothing in the way of signposting, it's up to you to sift through the documents and put together a piece of information from one page, with a leaflet, with a recipe in this case. Loved finding my own rabbits holes to go down, I wanted to push the cat angle seriously -- my first thoughts were it must have been something to do with the neighbour not liking the dead guy's cat pooing in his garden (hey, we've all experienced that, right?) and...well, maybe this is right, maybe it was wrong, that's for you to experience for yourself! Lest you think this is a Thinkfun love-in, I have played the two smaller "Escape From" games they have and didn't really like them too much, haven't tried ...

  A six or seven pound job from a UK supermarket in the run-up to Christmas, finally got around to letting the nine year old loose on this -- pretty much suited for that age range, essentially it's four separate puzzles to be solved, one maths, one tetrominoes, one logic and one (very) simple substitution cipher which give four answers: combine these to determine which one of twelve gingerbread men you have to eat to escape the house. Fully offline, small basic hint note with each puzzle, and each puzzle has its own envelope so you can work on it individually, or divvy up one puzzle per person for a small group; solution booklet which jumps straight to the answers so no layered hint system here. But, it's cheap and cheerful, scratches a puzzling itch and great for kids to work through on their own, using parents to shout at if they need help. Taking a photo of the last logic puzzle on an ipad and marking it up that way not only makes it easy to erase mistakes, it's quite go...

  Another release from Professor Puzzle -- as per Escape the Gingerbread House from the other day -- and bad news to report: they duplicate puzzles across their games. Four puzzle envelopes to solve which together give you a final location to choose from 12 to escape the hall, each can be worked on independently and each has a little hint envelope and solution booklet (which just gives the final solution rather than any layered hints). However. Puzzle 1 here is a direct copy of a puzzle from that other box -- same tetrominoes on the same grid with the same purpose. Puzzle 2 here is a direct copy of a puzzle from that other box -- it's the maths puzzle again. Puzzle 3 is decent, a nice little logic deduction puzzle that rewards and eye for small details. Puzzle 4 is a simple substitution cipher, identical to that in the other puzzle, only differences being cosmetic. As an individual product, if you only bought one of the two, then that's fine for the price -- if you're somew...

  Another Professor Puzzle Christmas supermarket special, this time in a smaller box, think deck of poker cards size, with twelve or so hard-wearing cardboard tiles and a few pieces of paper ephemera -- the narrative is so slight as to be practically non-existent (you are a photographer who has sneaked into a movie studio to snap pictures of the latest blockbuster, and security are chasing you down to escort you off the lot/break every bone in your body). Problems first -- the only way to check your final answer is to actually open the solution envelope, which contains the answer to everything on a single sheet -- so if you wanted to check a single puzzle, you have the whole thing opened in front of you. No hints sheets for individual puzzles. And it's the sort of thing that each of 12 puzzles gives you a letter for the final cryptogram, but you only really need roughly half to work out the whole answer based on context. Having said all that, the twelve puzzles are distinct and run...

  First impressions -- ton of complicated medical content to work through.... Tutorial -- Luana Kapule, heat stroke, dehydration, back pain Tell me about your back pain -- Shows it's in the region of her kidneys   Give her pain relief -- Stabilises pain Nephrologist test -- Suggests could be kidney infections, wants CBC Blood Test and Urinalysis Blood Test CBC -- High white blood cell count - could be Gallbladder which needs Ultrasound, or Kidney Infection which would show in Urinalysis Urinalysis -- Normal - therefore not Kidney Infection. Ultrasound -- Confirms gallstones - this needs surgery Gallbladder Removal -- Success! Very simple tutorial case to work through, there's also a step-by-step guide for running through it which was rather unnecessary I would say.

  And so to the conclusion, and the multi-layered narrative wraps up neatly with an answer to the mystery of just who did set fire to the orphanage and a final twist in the tale (did YOU see that coming?). Ciphers from the earlier two boxes are reprised here (although not my favourite one, the knock cipher, sob) which were for the most part fun to work through. However, it would be remiss of me not to offer one small criticism -- the pigpen cipher coupled with a column cipher is also coupled with an atbash cipher but there's no good narrative reason for this, nor any indication (as far as I could tell) that this was being done. This means that firstly you think you've decoded the pigpen incorrectly; secondly, that the keyword for the column cipher has changed; thirdly, to cast around for some other cipher that might be used instead (has this been encoded with the viginere cipher from earlier, perhaps?). Of course I might have entirely missed a clue somewhere that there would be...

  Just a short addendum to the notes on Episode One -- slightly less content this box "only" ten letters, five government documents, two postcards, one telegram, and a partridge in a pear tree, I mean, a photocopy of a newspaper article. Two ciphers this time, but they are meaty ones -- one of these was foreshadowed in box one (and is a perfect example of the CosyKiller interpretation of Chekov's Gun). The second is one of my all-time favourite ciphers, I call it the telegram cipher because the hook into solving it for me is a telegram always ends with STOP and this typically repeats a couple of times thus giving one a start point. I always work through these by hand instead of using any internet solver, because it's just such a blast to piece together. Strong narrative once more, developing the story a little more -- this time it's not just the voice of the eponymous Virginia Steele we hear, but a parallel narrative is developed by another character, which was on...

  This is a really hard one to review -- because there is so much about it to love, but certain things about it also could put people off. The facts to start with then -- this is Episode One of Three, it's a prelude to CosyKiller's The Inheritance, a wonderful, deeply immersive, 12 box series - their first - but knowledge of the events of that series are not necessary to play this. In this first box, you get a page of detective notes, a pigpen cipher sheet to solve, a handful of suspect note cards and photos, and a 100-page diary with a short entry in every day of 1911, which has a half dozen inserts in its pages, including a library card, four scraps of secret writing, and a newspaper article. The good bits -- narrative is king here. The story in this box is almost entirely told from the viewpoint of one person, and a certain amount of reading between the lines is needed. I love that -- I do not want to be spoonfed everything, I want to reason out other peoples' motivation...

  Just finished this one with my 9 year old son -- absolutely packed full of papers to read and review, lots of different styles of reports and interviews and evidence, and a minor puzzle to solve in terms of cracking a password. Objective is to look into each of the seven suspects and as usual, work out timelines, alibis, motives -- lots of notes taken and he loved working through it with me. Very satisfying deductions and conclusions, highly recommended. This is the second one in this range we've played (first was Murder of a Millionaire) so very happy to go for a third and maybe the whole series ultimately.

  After buying this in Sept 2023 and sitting on it for a year and a bit and seeing it in Tesco in the UK this year, last night I was finally motivated to move this from the pile of shame and take a crack at it. It's essentially a mostly online experience -- in the box are a few pieces of paper to set the scene (a paper wallet with a couple of cards and photos inside) and a nice intro booklet to set the scene and introduce a website which is the hub of everything that follows. Progress is gated via a series of questions -- answer a couple and the story develops with more evidence being available, and I quite liked this approach: you first of all work out the victim and his job and that gives you access to his personal network....check the details out of these to work out who are the suspects and that means they get brought in for interview...read the interviews and check various bits of paperwork and investigations, and work out their alibis...check who has a dodgy alibi and they ge...