Photo above is property of The Conundrum Box
Company: The Conundrum Box
Game: Tall Tales
Country: USA 🇺🇸
Language: English
Type of Game: Puzzles By Mail 📬
Genre: Adventure, Folklore
Date Played: September 17, 2021
Difficulty (based on 2 players): 7/10
Size of Team: Unlimited (Suggested 1-4 players, ages 12+)
Time: Unlimited (Suggested 2 hrs)
Price: $44.99 or subscribe - $29.99/ Month, $86.99/ 3 months, $161.99/ 6 months, $299.99/ 12 months
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You are an FBI agent sent in to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a man. According to eyewitnesses, he was sucked into a painting in the midst of giving a museum tour! Now you have the night alone in the Museum of American Folklore to investigate and try to find him...along the way, you learn about all kinds of characters featured in the museum, from well-known ones like Paul Bunyan to more obscure legends like Stormalong.
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The box itself that the game comes in is beautiful - very thick and sturdy, in full color, with a really pretty design on the front. The materials inside are exclusively paper products, with the exception of one magnet and one piece of string. The paper varies from glossy brochure type to a vellum overlay to more standard pieces of paper. The two biggest pieces - the museum map and visitor guide - are both high quality, colorful, and attractive. The remainder of the materials include a variety of qualities, from similar high-production quality to a few items that look like I could have printed them at home. Overall, the game has a fun and family-friendly table presence!
Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers
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You start the game with 4 sealed envelopes, a magnet, a map, and a visitor’s guide to the museum. There is also an informational sheet that gives you some basic instructions (e.g., some items may be used more than once!) and the link for the game website. The site introduces you to the story and also gives you a practice puzzle to help you get accustomed to how things work. We appreciated that they were explicit about only using lowercase letters and never spaces when inputting your passwords. Notably, you are also guided to optional materials to enhance your experience, including a 60-min. Spotify playlist and recipes for drinks and m/cocktails! We were not expecting or prepared for the dinner & drinks recipes, but got the playlist started (free Spotify account was required) and dove on in! The main flow of the game was to have some story text to read, with clues for the next puzzle. At the bottom, there would be a link to where to go to enter the password once you solved it, as well as a tiered hint system. (It is fully optional whether you want to time your gameplay, and there is no “penalty’ for using hints if you do.) Once you solve the puzzle and enter the correct password, it sends you to the next page to repeat. At certain points throughout the game, you are directed to open the different sealed envelopes.
Conundrum Box is a monthly subscription service, and there is some recurrence of specific characters across various boxes. However, each one is standalone, and we certainly did not feel like we needed to have played others to enjoy this one! Though, some tidbits at the end made us curious to see what future boxes might hold...They also provide you with reset instructions, and nothing was destroyed, meaning that you could easily pass this on to others to enjoy once you’re done!
Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers
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The puzzle flow was fairly linear here, as each webpage guides you to a specific puzzle. (Though, at the very beginning, we solved a few other puzzles early, because we had access to those paper materials and were not quite used to following the website step-by-step.) Among the 14 puzzles, there were a few quite simple ones, but definitely some very satisfying solves for us and some multi-step puzzles. We really liked that some items were used multiple times (and you typically needed to combine info from multiple places), and there was definitely some need for good observational skills! Despite the largely paper items, there were still puzzles that required construction and/or physical manipulation to solve them, which we always enjoy. All of the puzzles were fair, there was a nice variety of puzzle types, and the tiered hint system worked really nicely. While we have not played a lot of the subscription boxes, this certainly seemed tougher (and clearly far more puzzle-focused) than something like Deadbolt Mystery Society.
Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers
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This was our first Conundrum Box, so we were not quite sure what to expect. I must admit, we were a little disappointed when we first opened the gorgeous box and saw how little was inside it. (It does seem like it could ship in an envelope.) However, we were amazed at how much fun puzzling they packed in there! It took us 1 hour and 47 minutes as 2 experienced players going at a casual pace. The storyline was a lot of fun (things got crazy at the end!) and introduced us to some cool American folklore. While there were some parts of it that didn’t entirely make sense (like why the characters wanted us to solve puzzles for them), the puzzles themselves were very thematic and nicely tied to the specific character that they were associated with. If you are not into story, you could also largely skip the reading, as they kindly bolded the actual clues necessary to direct you towards the next puzzle. For us, the time flew by, and we really enjoyed the experience. The addition of the playlist (which fit the theme perfectly) really set the mood and enhanced the immersion of the game, and the inclusion of the recipes is a super fun idea as well. They really set up the idea of making a whole evening experience around your game, which is fantastic. The one miss for us on the efforts to improve immersion was the audio recordings of the story, which seemed to be computer-generated and really did not match the tone of the game. We do love that they have an audio option, though, and I think getting a real person to read them would be great. That was a minor thing, however. In all, we were really impressed with Tall Tales and are definitely looking forward to playing some more Conundrum Boxes in the future!
Check out our interview with the creators to understand more on the development side of the game:
Video above is property of ESCAPETHEROOMers
(If you do decide to try this experience, give us a shoutout or tag us on social media so we know you heard it from "ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)
Disclosure: We thank The Conundrum Box 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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