Overview: 4.0/5.0
What happens when broadway meets murder mystery puzzles? We’ve been eagerly waiting to find out!
Publisher: The Mystery Agency
Release Date: 2021
Price: £40 each or £99 for all 3
The Mystery Agency is a new provider for mysteries delivered to your doorstep, from some of the same brilliant minds behind The Play that Goes Wrong and other productions from Mischief theatre. There are three mysteries featured on the website so far.
The first thing that is immediately apparent about this box is the quality of the materials. The box and the components just feel good to handle. Upon opening The Ghost in the Attic, I found a newspaper page and a 1950s board game wrapped in a chain and padlock. There was a four word hint once I “started” the mystery online and then I was on my own. This was the first game like this where I had to solve a puzzle to get in to the mystery box, and I was instantly hooked. The first puzzle was a great way to ease into the game and was incredibly satisfying to solve, and the board game was fully playable too! Once you get past the first padlock, the games are mostly non-linear. There are sequences of puzzles that are strung together, each solution feeding into the next puzzle, but there are also plenty of puzzles that can be solved in any order. This preserves a sense of exploration while still driving the player toward the conclusion to the mystery. The Balthazar Stone was actually a wooden chest with several locked compartments!
The inside of the box gives you instructions to get started. You go to a website and enter a password to get started. The player can choose between a timed or untimed playing experience, and then open the first clue. The puzzles within the box are listed and each puzzle has a series of sequential hints available. The player can open these hints one at a time, and they get progressively more specific - the first hint is usually sufficient to guide the player in the right direction, and there are typically two additional hints as well. I typically only needed the first hint so I appreciated that I could reveal them one at a time.
The biggest critique I have for these mysteries is the logic of how you came to be solving the puzzles. There are plenty of moments where if you think about it too long, you’ll start to ask questions like: Why would this person construct this puzzle? Why did they leave this behind but not that? I can very plainly see this evidence that literally spells out the solution in the surveillance video, which means the police found it, so why didn’t they figure it out? Can they not read? These plot hole are particularly apparent in The Vanishing Gambler. However, if you suspend disbelief to ignore how the puzzles got there and just enjoy solving them, you’re sure to have a fun experience!
The only other complaint I have is that, as a new company, the boxes seem to be in need of a bit of polish or extra play testing for the user experience. For example, there were a few instances where I solved a puzzle but didn’t know what to do with the solution - there was nothing logically connecting the puzzle with the place to enter the solution. In another case, the only way to know which puzzle related to the online form was to enter a wrong answer and see the validation error. Finally, in one instance there was a button hidden behind a cookie notification banner, with no indication that the page had additional content.
Ultimately, the games have a great production quality and I can’t wait to see what future boxes may bring! Each took 2-2.5 hours to solve. US players should pay attention to shipping expectations for international orders - there have been some pandemic-related delays. I would highly recommend The Mystery Agency (and particularly Ghost in the Attic or The Balthazar Stone) to players that have already tried other mystery boxes. If you are looking for an introduction to mystery boxes at a lower price point, you may want to start with The Deadbolt Mystery Society first.
