Maybe we were tired?
In this chapter, you take a trip to the Open Bazaar Trading Commission and meet a mysterious tinker with a peculiar trinket. He has promised to share a secret with you if you can figure out his name.
You must repair the trinket, discover his name, and gain access to the knowledge he has to share to help your hunt for the 12 lost shards.
We had played Chapter 1: The Custodian’s Keys and didn’t really have a great time, then we played Chapter 2: The Warehouse on the Wharf and enjoyed it, so we were eager to see what Chapter 3: The Tinker’s Trinket was like.
We were on holiday in Dartmoor and as it was cold and wet outside, we decided to stay indoors and do nothing but play online/play at home escape rooms. Having just played and enjoyed Chapter 2, we thought it made sense to play Chapter 3 and hopefully continue the escape room high.
First impressions of Chapter 3 were good, it had the same quality feel about it as the other chapters and some nice little details that let us know that this was part of the series but still a different game. We cleared space at the table, continued our gaming playlist on Spotify, and opened the envelope to see what surprises were in store.
CONCEPT/EXECUTION
If you’ve read our reviews for Chapters 1 and 2 then the main thing that you’ll have seen us saying is that the materials in all the Curious Correspondence Club mailings are of top quality, and this was the same – only with the addition of a rubber band, interesting.
Once again, the story was front and centre of this experience, with another lengthy introduction to read that set the scene of what we were doing, and why. I don’t know the background of the team behind CCC but I would not be surprised if we were to find out that they were, in one way or another, storytellers. Once the game is complete there is a video that plays to wrap up the experience and give that closure that games so often lack.
This game revolved around patents and inventions so it made sense that CCC had once again pushed the boundaries of what could be done with card, and part of this game involved creating a little contraption, or to call it by its full name ‘Springless kinetic orbital calibration system for purposes of mechanical calibration’ – quite a mouth full!
CCC seem to get more and more adventurous with their components with each chapter they create, constantly pushing the boundaries of what can be made with simple cardstock. Newspaper that looked and felt like real newspaper, gizmo’s and contraptions and even a mirror – they pack a lot into this envelope.
PUZZLES
Unfortunately we found that once again this game didn’t click for us and we found ourselves having to turn to the clue system on a number of occasions to get us through it. Perhaps we were tired having just played Chapter 2, but we were on a high as we enjoyed that game so we hoped we would enjoy this one too, unfortunately, we didn’t.
The puzzles were clever, there is no doubt about that, but we just found they didn’t really make much sense and were lacking signposting to make it all flow and feel fun. This was compounded by the fact that we found the ‘contraption’ a bit fiddly to use and before using the hint system we found a couple of different ways to get solutions.
Chapter 2 had good signposting and we felt we knew where to go next and this helped us progress through the story, but in this Chapter we spent most of our time lost and on numerous occasions we said “How were we supposed to know to do that?” after looking at the clue system.
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
The other two games that we’ve played by CCC had a decent hint system that was good enough to get us back on track. With Chapter 3 we actually found that the clue system confused us more in places as it seemed to be in a random order rather than in the order one would expect to solve the puzzles.
The hint system still offered the customary nudges before offering the solution, which was good as we certainly needed help to get through this game. I don’t know if we were doing something seriously wrong but the order we thought we should solve things didn’t seem to tally with the hint system and we found ourselves jumping all over the place and just adding to our confusion.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I think this was our least favourite of the games we have played by Curious Correspondence Club. I don’t know if we were tired, or the puzzles just didn’t click with us, but we’d recommend Chapter 2 over this one.
Perhaps we will give it a try another day, with a clear head, and having had some more sleep as I want to believe that this is a good game and we were just not on form, but we left this game feeling glad to have it over and ready to move on to something else.
TOOLS REQUIRED
- Internet connection
- Pen and paper for notes (optional)
Final Rating:
Puzzles | |
Concept/Execution | |
Clue System | |
Value for Money | |
Enjoyment |
Team: 2 players
Time Taken: 1hr 30mins
Website: https://www.curiouscorrespondence.com/
*Disclaimer: we weren’t charged for this experience, but this has not influenced our review.
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