Photos provided by Serial Events
Company: Serial Events
Games: SPG: Serial Proving Grounds
Country: USA 🇺🇸
Language: English
Type of Game: App Puzzle Game 📱
Genre: Puzzles
Date Played: 1/31/2021
Difficulty (based on 6 players): 4/10
Size of Team: Up to 5 logins
Time: 60 Minutes (Approximately)
Price: $29.99/ team
🆃🅷🅴 🅶🅰🅼🅴 🅿🅻🅰🆈
This is a puzzle hunt game using the ClueKeeper App. The App is free to download. Once you purchase the game, the team leader can add 4 more players to the hunt from the App. You can play with less players but 5 is the max amount of logins allowed. There's a total of 30 independent puzzles and they can be done in any order. You and your teammates can decide to work on them together or divide and conquer. The game is synced so if one player types in an answer, it'll show up as "solved" for all the other players.
You're allowed a "free hint" for some puzzles but for others you'll have to purchase a hint with points. If you want to go for the leaderboard, you'll probably want to hold off on purchasing hints until absolutely necessary. If you don't use any hints, the maximum score you can receive is 4,000 points. You're also being timed so after 60 minutes is up, you'll receive a final score and anything solved after that will not count towards the final score.
🆃🅷🅴 🅿🆄🆉🆉🅻🅴🆂
The puzzles were presented in imagery formats. Most of them felt like trivia and general knowledge type of questions. Our international players felt a bit of disadvantage as most of the questions referenced back to things or people in the United States. It's nothing Google can't solve (hope that's not consider cheating as we did have to ask big brother "G" for help a few times). There were only a few simple ciphers you'll have to solve so our advice to experienced puzzle players is to not over think the puzzles and just have fun with them.
🅲🅻🅾🆂🅸🅽🅶 🆃🅷🅾🆄🅶🅷🆃🆂
We played the game as a team and worked on the puzzles together. We flew through all the puzzles and had about 25 minutes left with two remaining questions. Ultimately we left one puzzle unsolved (definitely a "duh" moment after realizing what we had to do after the fact) and finished with 3800 points. The hint could have been a bit more helpful as it's not in a progressive format so if you couldn't get it from the preliminary hint then you're pretty much out of luck.
It would've been great if the game could give a solution reveal after the game has ended. I guess they couldn't implement that separately and adding that option to the game would give some teams advantage if they decide to use hints to reveal the solution. Feel free to contact us if you had any questions after playing but their customer service was also very helpful at giving us what we needed after we inquired about the question we didn't complete.
We had a lot fun working through these questions as a team. It wasn't really challenging since we've all done plenty of puzzles before but it was great to see everyone's contribution to different things that they are good at (whether it be trivia knowledge or deciphering). If you want to give this game a try, you'll have to do it before March 31st as it won't be available on ClueKeeper after that! Time to assemble your team!
𝔼𝕊ℂ𝔸ℙ𝔼𝕋ℍ𝔼ℝ𝕆𝕆𝕄𝕖𝕣𝕤❜ ℙ.𝕀.𝕤❜ 𝕋𝕙𝕠𝕦𝕘𝕙𝕥𝕤
Jacqueline G.
Pros:
- Fun with friends
- Mostly simple puzzles
- Has a timer so it feels like a challenge
Cons:
- Hints were not plentiful enough or helpful enough if you got stuck
- Did not reveal answers once the game was over
This puzzle was fun with a bunch of people but I think it would be more challenging with 2-3 people. Most of the puzzles were simple enough to solve and still fun. I only wish there was a way to reveal answers or get better hints. I would recommend this puzzle to newer players.
RJ G.
Pros
- Short and simple puzzles
- Smartphone App is easy to use and intuitive.
-Ability to divide and conquer makes everyone feel like they are doing their part
Cons
-Some of the puzzles are extremely easy
-Many of the puzzles felt too similar -There weren't enough puzzles
This is a short and simple collection of puzzles for a small group. I would suggest this game for newer or younger puzzlers.
Jess A. & Matt L.
We liked:
- The coloured letter replacement puzzles
- The call back to previous puzzles to give some sense of cohesion
- The time went relatively quickly and we were always doing something
We didn’t like:
- There was not a clear theme, though you did need a lot of knowledge of the USA or be prepared to google
- Wished there would have been the option for more than one hint
- Although there was a clock there was no sense of urgency in completing anything - the amount of puzzles and time limit could have lent itself to a group splitting and working on multiple puzzles at once, but the amount of call backs made that difficult
- Not an issue with the game, but we are not fans of the ClueKeeper interface. Found the design really hard to pay attention to (so much grey!) and it seemed to have a lot more buttons than it really needed
*** We regret to inform this game is no longer available***
Disclosure: We thank Serial Events for providing us with a sample of the game. Although a complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.
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