Crux Club - "Puzzle Rap Star"

Photo above is property of Crux Club

Company: Crux Club

Game: Puzzle Rap Star

Country: USA 🇺🇸

Language: English

Type of Game: Puzzles By Mail 📬

Genre: Music, Hip Hop

Date Played: June 12, 2022

Difficulty (based on 1 player): 6/10

Size of Team: Unlimited

Time: Unlimited

Price: $12.99 (Paperback)

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You and your friends have started up a rap crew but mysteriously your boy Craz has gone missing. Traveling through the underground, Brooklyn’s Wonderville Arcade and more while exploring the rap world, it won’t be easy though to find the truth and more as you must solve puzzles and find clues along the way in boom boxes, graffiti and subways.

Video above is property of Crux Club

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Looking at the book, it has a colorful cover of a rapper and as you flip through the book, you see a lot of black and white cryptic images ready to be solved. One thing I like is that even the tagline on the front rhymes - "Wordplay your way to fame/ In a puzzle book game"!!

Photo above is property of Crux Club

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This book plays straightforward as you start from the beginning and go through page-by-page. Some pages will go through the story and some will give you the flavor text for some of the puzzles. One thing I love about the book is that it stays true to the theme and everything is done in rhymes and in rap style. In my head, I was absolutely rapping along with the story. The photos and artwork throughout the book really embodied the hip hop culture with music, breakdancing, graffiti, etc.

There were 2 ways to access the hints, an online way and inside the book itself. The online system is using their website and getting hints one at a time or getting the solution. The other way had the hints in the back of the book listed out and then a separate section for the solutions. Having the option for hints within the book was nice to have, especially when I played the game on the go. My only concern, was that you could easily see all the hints at once, where you might have only been looking for one in particular.

Photos above are property of Crux Club

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This book had 60 puzzles and I was impressed with the different variations of them all. The puzzles ramp up well with a lot of variety from word, matching and music related puzzles. For one person playing this book, I never found myself stuck for too long and even the ones I did, the hints were helpful to get me through them. Certain puzzles would require you to use the answers from previous puzzles to be able to finish it so definitely keep track of your answers. Though not tying directly into the story, the puzzles also stuck to the theme and I even got to learn a few things about flow, rhythm, and beats.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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I am a sucker for rhymes which helped make this book a ton of fun to play. With so many puzzles in the game, I was amazed by the wide variety. This book was also easy to carry around and travel with, having the hints and solution in the back of the book. Theme-wise, this was an amusing and different game to play, even as someone who knows very little about rap. The promotional trailer had a rap song written and performed by InvAsian, co-founder of ESCAPETHEROOMers, and even had a beat which I may or may not have used to rap my way through the book (I will be keeping my day job). This was a niche themed game but they did it right. I hope this book inspires others to create puzzle books on other niche themes as well (Cheese Making puzzle book anyone?).

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(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 Crux Club 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.

#MatthewLui #AtHomeGames #TabletopGames #PuzzleByMail #PuzzleBooks #Music #HipHop #Rap #CruxClub #USA