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Company: The Curious Correspondence Club
Game: Chapter XXIII: Destination Pt. 1
Country: Canada 🇨🇦
Language: English
Type of Game: Tabletop Game 📬
Genre: Mystery
Date Played: February 7, 2023
Difficulty (based on 1 player): 7/10
Size of Team: Unlimited (Age 12+)
Time: Unlimited (Suggested: 60-90 Minutes)
Price: $21.95 (free shipping in North America); Monthly Subscription: $19.95/Yearly Subscription: $179.00
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As you race up the steps, you can barely recognize the place due to all the chaos; M.B. Franklin Museum of Natural History. As you reach the top, you run into a familiar friend, Arjun, who debriefs you quickly as he leads you down the hall. Starfall agents have converged here, believing that the last dial is hidden in the museum somewhere as well as discovering a secret lab underneath for unknown purposes. With many Brightstar agents trying to fight them off, Arjun leads you to the surveillance room. Sitting you down in front of the CCTV screens, he needs you to dispatch the Brightstar agents to the appropriate locations to take down the Starfall operatives and get their keycards to access the underground lab.
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Unsealing the envelope, I was greeted with the story written on the envelope with a list of the contents on one side and a QR code to the hints on the other side. Investigating the contents, I find some interesting paper items that include security screens, trading cards and pieces of a pamphlet.
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After reading the narrative, I was immediately sucked into the urgency and struggle of the story. The narrative is fantastic. If you have been following along for all of Season 2, you will not be disappointed. You do not need to know the story to play but you will exponentially get much more out of the game if you do.
This game was a little different from CCC’s standard flow from previous games as there were additional puzzles on the front end before leading to the non-linear puzzles that lead to the meta puzzle.
There was a lot of great content packed into this envelope. Though there was no 3D item to be built, this game did have the standard CCC feel in the game with a “card scanner”. One new addition in this game were the trading cards of key characters from previous chapters.
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As a big fan of trading cards, I loved that some of the puzzles revolved around something similar to a collectable card game (CCG). The overarching story and goal of the game was clued well but I did find that some of the more detailed signposting lacking with the puzzles. Once I read one or 2 hints for the first puzzle though, the entire game fell into place.
There were a nice variety of puzzles that ranged from logic to eureka to matching. The puzzles were set up to be played non-linearly which would help with a big group but I found that with CCC’s use of all the sides of the paper, coordination is key. The back of a puzzle someone would be working could be required for a different puzzle. One tip would be to have people bring their phones so they can take a picture of the text to read and hand the paper off to others.
The hint system for this game requires you to go to their website and for each puzzle, there are 2 hints before providing you with the solution. For this game, I found the solutions were only obvious once you completed all the puzzles and noticed the pattern, but I was not sure if I had the solution correct looking at each puzzle individually.
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"Chapter XXIII: Destination Pt. 1" was an absolute blast to go through. This game had the right amount of difficulty, and they were able to translate the feel of an action movie into the puzzles. As a big fan of trading cards, I really enjoyed how they were able to make some fun puzzles with them and incorporate them into the game. This would be a good game for a small handful of veteran solvers. This would not be the first CCC game I would dive into but one that rewards you if you have been following along season 2. This penultimate chapter had me on the edge of my seat and has me anticipating the final chapter.
(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 The Curious Correspondence 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.
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