The photo above was provide by Cold Case Crackers
Company: Cold Case Crackers
Game: Fairlake Heist Case
Country: USA 🇺🇸
Language: English
Type of Game: Puzzles By Mail 📬
Genre: Mystery
Date Played: 5/11/2021
Difficulty (based on 2 players): 4/10
Size of Team: Unlimited (Recommended 1-6 Players)
Time: Unlimited (Approx. 60-90 Min)
Price: $29.99
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In January of 2005, the Broadway Savings and Loan Bank was robbed by three armed perpetrators. They stole over 2 million dollars and fled the scene. Although there were 5 suspects, the police did not have enough evidence to arrest anyone and the case went cold. A year and a half later, new information arose when they arrested a criminal who was trafficking these stolen goods. This time with your help, they are determined to catch the culprit.
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"Fairlake Heist Case" came in a large brown envelope. Inside you'll find two folders (rules/game play and evidence) and 4 sealed numbered envelopes with the word "phase" on them.
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In the rules and game play folder, you'll receive a backstory letter along with a website link to enter solutions and to receive tips. If you don't want to read the backstory, there's also an audio intro on their website from the detective.
We read through all the evidence before opening the phase 1 envelope. For us, it felt like it was a smart choice. When we opened the phase 1 envelope, we already knew most of the information and was able to connect the new resources with the old ones. As we solved the puzzles, it was very clear which answer was the right choices. I suppose you can also open phase 1 envelope first and start solving the puzzles first but eventually you'll still have to go back to the evidence folder.
Each phase had a question that we had to answer. Once we input the right answer into the website portal, we were allowed to go onto the next phase. The game play was quite smooth so we didn't have to use any hints. Since we divided the reading material and combined our notes, our game took about an hour to complete.
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The puzzles were quite easy. A lot of them were merely sleuthing for clues from the paper documents. There was one cipher that had clear instructions on what we needed to do to solve it. The game was more concentrated on narrative and finding the correlations between each character and their alibis. I liked the feeling of stepping into the shoes of a detective as I organized the different suspects per their photo, interview, fingerprint and other information as they surfaced. It was like creating those link charts that I have seen in shows like Criminal Minds or CSI.
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I love these types of investigative games especially ones with narratives between various characters. It's great that a lot of photos were provided for locations, items, people throughout the game as it made us the realness and the close connection with the storyline. It's always a fun time when Brandon and I could turn ourselves into a character in the story after reading about their personalities. We had a blast taking turns being the suspect and the detective. The final reveal is always great when you can say: "Oh so that's why or I knew it!" Cold Case Crackers was able to give us these reactions and we look forward to cracking more cold cases with them!
Check out our interview with the creators to understand more on the development side of these game:
(If you do decide to try this game, give us a shoutout or tag us on social media so we know you heard it from "ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)
Disclosure: We thank Cold Case Crackers for providing us with a sample of their game. Although a complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.
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