OVERVIEW: 4.0/5.0
Finders Seekers is a monthly subscription service that delivers a mystery-in-a-box for players to solve. Themes vary, but each box costs $25-30 and includes papers and props necessary to solve the mystery. Our box contained a Chicago cold case and included a variety of papers, postcards, and even a giant foam finger. You can learn more about Finders Seekers on their website here.
I received a free copy of a Finders Seekers mystery box from Cratejoy in exchange for my honest review.
Finders Seekers is a self-contained mystery box, even more so than other subscription boxes we’ve tried. Not only is entire mystery contained within the box, so were all of the clues and hints. Many other subscriptions boxes rely on online content to supplement the physical components in the box. In the Finders Seekers box we tried, the only time we needed to use the computer was to check the final solution. I can’t confirm that this is the case for all of their mysteries, but it was nice that this one relied almost entirely on the physical contents of the box. Speaking of physical components, I appreciated the use of full-size photographs and high-quality cardstock for the clues in this box. It was satisfying to handle the “evidence” and there were several puzzles that required physically manipulating the components to reveal a clue.
While the components were satisfying to handle, the overall structure of this mystery was not. The box contained a packet with a page per puzzle, where each puzzle would reveal the name of a guilty suspect. As you solved each puzzle, you would scratch off the corresponding suspect’s name on a grid to confirm that you got the correct solution. At the end, the player is tasked with identifying the leader from that list of suspects, which only required noticing that 8 of the suspects were all looking in the direction of the leader, who was looking straight ahead. True to its name, this mystery was more about finding something than solving something in the context of a more realistic mystery. There was no real logic behind why a certain piece of evidence led to a specific subject. It was just a matter of revealing a name through a cipher, etc.
Finders Seekers might be the easiest subscription box we’ve tried. I was able to solve the mystery successfully within 40 minutes without assistance from the provided hints. The puzzles themselves were all easy both in terms of identifying what needed to be done, and then completing the puzzle itself. The instructions were very clear in guiding the user through the mystery, and the hints provided seemed sufficient for nudging the player in the right direction without revealing the solution. This type of clarity is important for avoiding unnecessary frustration, but the puzzles were so entirely frictionless, that there was no real sense of achievement at the end of the mystery either. There was nothing for the player to overcome for that satisfying aha moment as you piece together the solution.
If you’re new to mystery subscription boxes, Finders Seekers may be the perfect place to start. It’s a good introduction to how these types of mystery boxes can be solved. If you’re looking for something to do with a larger group and need to divide up puzzles or solve the mystery before everyone loses interest, this also might be better than the longer, more difficult puzzle boxes. However, more experienced players looking for a challenge might be disappointed in thee length and difficulty of Finders Seekers.
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