Above photo was provided by Extraordinary Investigations
Company: Extraordinary Investigations
Country: United Kingdom 🇬🇧
Language: English
Type of Game: Puzzles By Mail 📬
Date Played: 6/3/2021
Genre: Detective, Mystery
Size of Team: Unlimited
Time: Unlimited
Price: $17.99
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We received both books via Amazon. They were delivered in a well packaged cardboard box. The covers of the books have a nice glossy finish. Inside you'll find various information in images and text format regarding each of the cases.
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Both of the books by Extraordinary Investigations were designed in the same format. You'll get a detailed intro on how you could approach this puzzle book right at the beginning. "The Morgan File" had 6 files (chapters) and "The Midas Project" had 5 files. Each file had about 5-7 questions. You had to solve puzzles, search the internet or find the answers in the book. If you get stuck, there's a 3 step nudging hint system in the back of the book. If you still can't solve it, there's a encrypted solution sheet that was well made to avoid spoilers. The final question (for both of the books) will not have a solution. You'll probably need to either email the creator or get help from other players online.
You can solve the mystery by the "questions-only" way which would be to find the answers and input them in the automated chatbot system on their website. This would be the quicker way to play the game as the chatbot serves as an awesome guide in terms of informing you on what you'll need to look at next. You can also choose to play "wider search" mode which will require more reading. There's a lot of real history behind these stories and you can easily get drawn into the storyline itself.
Since we had limited time in our hands, we played it the "questions-only" way. Each file contained various puzzles and information that you could essentially solve in a non-linear way. But because it's a book, we weren't able to divide and conquer. I guess some players could take screen shots of various pages and solve the puzzles separately that way. We read through all the information in each file first before we went back to the puzzles. This really helped us in associating what information went with what question. Of course when we saw things we were able to decipher, we immediately stopped everything and solved those first. One thing we had to constantly remind ourselves with this game is that if there's something we're not able to find in the book, we had to resort the solution to the internet.
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When I first started playing "The Morgan File", I thought I was going to fly through the puzzles! Don't be fooled as those were just warm ups. The level of difficulty drastically increases as you get through the files. Your ultimate test is the ending puzzle. There's no solution so you'll probably need to bribe the creator or befriend some smarties.
The puzzles were really well-thought-out to go along with the storyline. In "The Morgan File", there were a lot of wartime reference, foreign language usage, decoding secret Morse code messages, finding out hidden locations etc. "The Midas Project" had more Alchemy references along with Math and coding. Each of them were really different and we liked the variations we saw from the two books. Not all of the answers to the questions will be puzzles. Some were purely internet research and some were merely finding the information through reading the books. At times we definitely over thought some puzzles that were simply right in front of our eyes. But some were really tough and will definitely take patience and time. If anyone has solved the last questions. please contact us.
Game: The Morgan File
Difficulty (based on 2 adult players): 8.5/10
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Louis Morgan had gone missing since May 2016. The police still cannot crack this case. You've just received all the evidence they've collected from his apartment. Hopefully you'll find something that they've missed?
Game: The Midas Project
Difficulty (based on 2 adult players): 8/10
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In December of 2004, some pieces associated with John Dee has been stolen from the Science Museum. The police believe the culprit was Jonathan Valentine-Andrews. The strange thing is the items have been returned after the robbery. Johnathan had recently passed away and you were given the items collected from his apartment. Could you figure out why he did such a strange thing?
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This is a puzzle book series based on the fact that we're agents of XIU, a less-known agency of the UK government founded by Churchill back in 1910. Our missions were to solve these difficult unsolved cases from years ago. Each case seem to be something quite peculiar at the beginning but as you go through many twists and turns (that you'll only able to discover once you solve the puzzles and enter the correct answers), the ending were always eye-openers. Each file gave us more clues that would lead to more reveals. It was very satisfying when we're able to solve the puzzles one after another at the beginning. You'll definitely get stumped and probably need some patience to work through the rest of the files. If you love history and reading, you'll really enjoy many parts of this experience. Let us know if you have the endurance to crack the case or did you leave it unsolved?
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"!)
The Morgan File
The Midas Project
Disclosure: We thank Extraordinary Investigations 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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