Above photos have been provided by Crimibox
Company: Crimibox
Games: Missing In Jericho
Country: Belgium 🇧🇪
Language: English, Dutch
Type of Game: Digital Mystery Game 💻
Genre: Detective, Murder Mystery
Date Played: September 8, 2021
Difficulty (based on 4 players): 7.5/10
Size of Team: Unlimited (Suggested 1-4 people)
Time: 10 Hours (Approximately)
Price: $25.00/Game
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Alice Wild is a blogger who recently arrived in Jericho, a small town in Oregon. What could possibly be of interest here? And now she's gone missing. It's up to you to dig up the secrets hidden behind this picturesque cover of Jericho and give us some answers to the whereabouts of Alice...
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Once you purchase the code, you'll need to register your email and provide your phone number. The game will use this information to communicate with you and save your game progress. The code should not be shared among players if you intend to play with a group as it'll mess up the chatbot's progression. You can however play over Zoom but it's quite difficult to share screen on the audio, text and photo components as it's contained within the platform. One thing that we had a lot of issues with is reading the text or checking out the details on a certain image as they can not be enlarged.
When you first login to the game, you'll be taken to a beautifully hand crafted map of the town of Jericho. This is the first time you'll be introduced to the different characters in the game. Make sure you take good notes as there's a ton of characters! It's important to remember who they are and if there's any involvements between them. There's also a lot of places to visit like the character's homes, church, mine, etc...All the instructions will be given through the game's chatbot. You can select functions that's already preprogramed or click "investigate" to input your own commands. The trigger words are very specific though so that did cause some delay during our game play to get exactly what the chatbot wanted.
The game also included other websites, audio files, phone calls, social media platforms to make the game feel more immersive. At times we had to reconfirm to make sure if this is an real website or social media account and if its part of the game or not.
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Most of the mystery type of games we've played concentrated on the storyline and not the puzzles. Missing In Jericho actually provided a good variation of puzzles to satisfy the puzzler community as well. We've encountered secret messages we had to decipher, hidden websites and objects, logic, deduction and more! It was definitely an exciting adventure especially when we're able to solve it on our own without using the hint system.
The hint system is build-in with the chatbot. If you are lost, click the hint button and it'll nudge you on the next step (in small increments). If you still can't solve it after the nudges, the chatbot (inspector Mia who's helping you on the case) will give you the solution. The only thing we wish the chatbot could allow us to do is to go directly from that certain nudge as if "walk away" to try the game ourselves but wanted another nudge, we would have to talk to Mia all over again in order to get there. Sometimes that conversation can be very long and tedious.
Some of the puzzles were really clever as it combined information or items we've seen during the investigation. The only thing complain we have is the size of the provided image or text for the puzzle. Because we can't enlarge it, it makes it very difficult to read them and at times we had to burn a hint because we couldn't see the clues clearly.
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There's a total of 4 chapters in Missing In Jericho. It's very addicting once you dive into the storyline. We took a few hours each day and completed it in 3 days. You'll know in the game when you're at the end of a chapter. It was really difficult to hit that "pause" button each time as we really wanted to find out what happened next. With an improved chatbot system and clues, we would have definitely enjoyed the game a lot more. The struggle was mainly due to not being able to figure out the exact trigger words and having to go through the system in a very rigid way where we can't just hop to where we want to continue. Crimibox did a great job at leaving cliffhangers, even till the end! The twist and turns in the storyline was excellent. It was like watching episodes of a reality TV show. I can't wait to find out if there'll be a sequel!
Check out our interview with the creator to understand more on the development side of the game:
*** We regret to inform this game is no longer available for booking but check out other games on their website***
(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 Crimibox for comping our tickets for this game. Although a complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.
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