Boxaroo - "Colby's Curious Cookoff"

Updated: Apr 28

Photos provided by Boxaroo

Company: Boxaroo

Country: USA 🇺🇸

Language: English

Type of Game: Online Puzzle Games 💻

Genre: Fun

Date Played: 8/25/2020

Difficulty (based on 4 players): 7.5/10

Size of Team: Unlimited

Time: Unlimited

Price: Pay-What-You-Can ($25 recommended)

We became huge fans of Boxaroo's escape rooms when we last visited them on our MA escape room tour. Their "Story Teller's Secret" easily took a spot on our Top Rated Rooms 2020 list. We were very excited when we heard about an online game that they were working on. They came out with a few teaser puzzles at first and we were immediately addicted to the format.

"Colby's Curious Cookoff" was a story about a boy named Colby who was looking to win a tri-state cookoff. But before he could attend the competition, he needed to complete a 4-page application to see if he was qualified. We played this game with our good friends Bluefish Games over video conferencing. This was a great way to play the game since there were definitely moments when each teammate had obvious strength at various puzzles (audio, math, crossword, deduction, ciphers, decoding, choice your own adventure, etc...). There were times when we also had to use Google so it definitely saved us time by dividing the workload.

The puzzles varied in difficulty level (1-3 red peppers were indicators) and were mixed throughout the game. The game was divided into 4 segments (you could log in and out of the game anytime you want as it'll automatically save your progress). Each segment had various puzzles with a meta puzzle at the end. The game was full of surprises. Just as we thought we were done, there was yet another meta puzzle after what we thought was the finale.

The storyline was very cute and used a lot of funny puns. Some jokes that were embedded in the answers really gave us that "ah...har har...." moment. We also love the cute graphics. The interface was great and easy to use as we didn't need to print anything out and were able to draw, input, drag, and at one moment even played a little "video game". The only thing we're unsure about was how the hint system would work since we didn't use any. There was a light bulb at the end of each puzzle where if you got stuck, you could email for help. I could see some players might get frustrated if the responses were not immediate. Also, there were a few puzzles I'm not sure how they would be able to write a hint for unless the players could bypass the puzzle. Regardless, this was definitely a really fun game to gather a team to tackle. If you do complete the game, you'll join us on the leaderboard with a full 35 points! You'll definitely need to earn your spot though. Some puzzles really made us work for it but the ending was definitely satisfying. We are already itching for their next project and hopefully, it'll come out soon!