Cold Case Inc. - "The Elite Grand Enigma"

Photo above is property of Cold Case Inc.

Company: Cold Case Inc.

Game: The Elite Grand Enigma

Country: United Kingdom 🇬🇧

Language: English

Type of Game: Digital Escape Game 💻

Genre: Mystery, Detective

Date Played: December 13, 2023

Difficulty (based on 2 players): 7/10

Size of Team: Unlimited

Time: Approximately 4-6 Hours

Price: $149.99

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The Elite Grand Hotel, a place where the rich and famous, the movers and the shakers of society, and the politicians and prostitutes alike, all come together to rub shoulders, and live in a beautiful world beyond the likes of me and you. It is a place of secrets, social privilege, and hedonistic desires; and when Isabella Novakova is found dead in her room, the scene becomes a forensic enigma, stratifying the many motives, methods, and opportunities of its elite inhabitants. Solve the Elite Grand Enigma, survey its shadowy figures, and figure out who killed Isabella Novakova and why.

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We are back, baby, bigger, better and more mysterious than ever. Round 3. Here we go. I really like doing these, if you can't already tell. Detective Tiger Bunny is on the case again…

"The Elite Grand Enigma". What a combination of words, it invokes an aura of inscrutable mystery, all hiding within a daunting web of conspiracy. Prepare to have your mind blown, or atleast to have it bend, as it tries to fathom what it must reckon with, behind the closed doors of aristocratic society. This time I feel the narrative has taken on new bolder dimensions, incorporating both the personal and the political, upping the narrative stakes, and approaching a plot that is ever more plausible and real, and therefore more engrossing. As with the previous games in the Cold Case Inc series, at its core it is a plot about murder, and the deduction of motive, method, and opportunity. You get a mass of multimedia evidence, which you then must sift through, making the proper connections, and drawing the proper conclusions, until your correct reasoning has reconstructed the murder and eliminated all suspects but one. You will need to take notes, it can get that involved. The setting is actually quite simple, a hotel, but the motives swirling about the suspects is quite complex, and the means and opportunity even more so. I was engrossed until the last moment, still uncertain, still reflecting, still following leeds, and still trying to justify my reasoning beyond a shadow of a doubt. This game is a masterwork of mimetic design, creating a scenario that convincingly simulates a real life murder mystery, simulating and challenging our powers of forensic deduction. Do you know how involved it is, and what ingenuity is required to create a complex yet accessible layers of evidence, replete with little logical puzzles solvable through a combination of an induction of the simple fact, in conjunction with our very own common sense reasoning and ingenuity, without giving into temptation to abstract puzzling, all within a narrative that maintains its logical consistency despite the expanding web of truths and corollaries…Its the height of the art itself. I take my hat off to the man.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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It makes you feel like a genuine, bona fide, real life detective, working the case, following the leads, making connections, and finally putting the pieces together. It is all there, everything you need to solve the case, and yet it is hidden beneath what appears to be at first a opaque surface of information, that on reflection is formed of layers that ever approach the truth, a mystery unfolding by the very power of your forensic ingenuity. Because the case is built mimetically - true to life - and rendered in a logically consistent way, it allows the player to step into the game as if it were the real world, engrossing their imagination into the real forensic mechanisms of our own social world; and that is one of its greatest virtues, and a standard upon which all works of the same genre should be measured. You will be impressed when you see it from the other side, how well the narrative holds up. The key puzzles are quite clever, and their solutions are quite the eureka moments. I should also add this: it is an almost impossible challenge for the creator to account for the diversity of ways in which players might interpret the game, and by the end I found myself with some questions, and maybe a few minor, minor, inconsistencies, unresolved points, and corollaries which i didn't think were quite answered. That's one of the great things with these creations, they have a life of their own. The formula has been perfected here, it's just a matter of pushing it to the ideal.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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The man has outdone himself again. I can confidently say that this is the best case yet. It has all the charms and mystery of the other ones, while enlarging the scope and ambition of the production. This is a thick mystery, and a many layered cake, for you to savor and enjoy working through. If you're a fan of the genre then you should definitely check this one out.

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Disclosure: We thank Cold Case Inc. for providing us with samples of the game. Although a complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.

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