CosyKiller: Virginia Steele Box One

 

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' motivations and actions based on seemingly unrelated reports. The ciphers in the diary itself are logical -- there's a good reason for them to exist, and for them to exist in the form they do. That for me is the perfect marriage of puzzle and story.

The not-so-good bits -- this is in no way a done-in-one thing, it is very much part one of a three-part story, and you have to be ready to go along for the ride. There is stuff in box one that won't (I hope) pay out until later on -- the pigpen cipher for example: there is no in-game reason for this to exist where it does in box one, there is no reason why it should be a combination of pigpen and column cipher, not what the point would be of using a second cipher if you give the keyword at the start of the pigpen cipher. One has to accept that a reason for this will become clear in due course.

Secondly, the price can certainly turn off some people -- it's £30 per box in the UK, and as I say, you have to buy all three to get the full effect - £90 on a single story, with five ciphers in the first box. But but but but. The narrative content is lengthy and deep -- the storyline is well thought out and intricate. There's a lot of world building. And it's all in the box...no online component needed.

I admit I didn't want to pay the full price for this, but snapped it up in their recent sale, came in at just under £20 per box and that for me is the sweet spot price point. Given what I paid for it - then it's a total recommendation for fans of heavy-on-the-narrative-light-on-the-puzzling side of the hobby.

But, you know, there's a 100 page diary here, so....