Overview: 2.0/5.0
Hunt a Killer has partnered with Agatha Christie Limited to produce an all-in-one whodunit, which can be purchased independently of their subscription campaigns. Due to a case of the flu, Poirot is unavailable and players must assist Captain Hastings in solving a murder at a hunting lodge.
Publisher: Hunt a Killer
Release Date: October 25, 2021
Price: $99-189 (Standard or Collector’s Edition)
Difficulty: 3/5 (According to Hunt a Killer)
The mystery itself is very straightforward. There aren’t any twists or red herrings to chase. There’s one 3-digit combination to solve and a few ciphers to decode. Otherwise, the gameplay just consists of reading through documents and putting together a timeline to establish suspect alibis. Like plenty of other mystery boxes, Hunt a Killer hosts a section on their website for hints, epilogue content, and accessibility documents - text versions of handwritten documents in case you’re struggling to read the copy in the box. Unlike other services, however, Hunt a Killer requires that you subscribe to their newsletter in order to access this content. Particularly for accessibility content, I find this abhorrent, but it was still frustrating to be asked to subscribe when I’d already paid for the box. Unfortunately, when I reluctantly put in my email address, I received the following error.
I contacted the customer support team and they were ultimately able to just email me the content, but it was still incredibly frustrating and they didn’t seem at all bothered by the fact that the content was so difficult to obtain.
The verdict: this just doesn’t warrant the price point. The box states a difficulty of 3/5, but it was one of the easiest mystery boxes I’ve encountered. The estimated play time was 4+ hours, but I completed it in closer to 2 hours. You can get more engaging and challenging gameplay for 1/4 the price from Deadbolt Mystery Society. This came in a nicer box that didn’t require papers to be folded, but that’s hardly worth an extra $75!
