Within the Story - "Lost in the Machine"

Photo above is property of Within The Story

Company: Within The Story

Game: Lost in the Machine

Country: United Kingdom 🇬🇧

Language: English

Type of Game: Tabletop Game 📬

Genre: Detective, Mystery

Date Played: February 11, 2022

Difficulty (based on 1 player): 2/10

Size of Team: Unlimited

Time: Unlimited (Approx. 1-2 Hours)

Price: £15.00

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It is a dark evening of sleeplessness as you lie in bed waiting for sleep when you hear a ping of a message arriving in your inbox. A long-forgotten friend is seeking your help. With an orphanage in trouble, a desperate plea, and strange inventions in the works you are tasked with helping to unravel the mystery behind the children lost in the machine. Will you uncover the truth in time?

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"Lost in the Machine" comes in a small box with a clean design sleeve displaying a teddy bear. Inside the box is an introduction letter to get your started, a small capsule, and 14 envelopes labelled with abstract messages that will only make sense when you know when to open them. Inside the envelopes are a range of letters and pamphlets from characters over the course of the experience. The main board for this game is an online text interface provided in the introduction letter.

Photos above are property of ESCAPETHEROOMers

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The game starts with the welcome letter, which introduces the game and provides a link to the website for the game. As you engage with the characters on this platform you will be prompted to open certain envelopes and provided with goals to solve. Once you have figure out the answer you submit your answers in the chat log. In addition, there are websites to search and break into to help further develop the experience. This experience has different endings depending on the choices you make. These choices aren’t always obvious so be on the lookout. I was able to identify three endings.

A very light hint system is embedded into the game. At certain points the game will

prompt you to submit your answer or ask for help. A single clue is provided but no

solution. I will note the puzzles are light enough that these hints were sufficient for my experience. I did find accessing the websites were a bit tricky. I found some of the websites would not load on Google Chrome, but I was able to load them on my iPhone using Safari. If you do run into this issue try using a different search engine to get the website to load.

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This game is very light with puzzling as the focus is the stories and choices. The

puzzles mainly consist of searching puzzles as you explore the websites and use the

letters to guide you. I found the lighter puzzles meant I was able to see the richness in the story telling some more. What I liked about these puzzles was that they also provide new story material as you moved along so I recommended reading everything you see to really get the message. I did find a few areas are got stuck were mainly because the sign posting on what to submit was a little vague but just know the answers are there. Overall, I found this is more of an immersive interactive adventure than an escape room experience.

Photos above are property of Within The Story

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"Lost in the Machine" is a poignant narrative experience that draws in the player through exploration and story building. I would say I would recommend this to immersive theatre enthusiasts because of its ARG style puzzles and heavy story. For my playing style, I found the simple puzzles to put this game on the shorter side and, as such, it is a great experience to unwind in the evening after work because of its low commitment. I am curious to see what more experiences are to come from this company.

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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 Within The Story for providing us with a sample of this game. Although complimentary experience was generously provided, it does not impact our opinion on the review whatsoever.

#JillianRaymond #AtHomeGames #TabletopGames #PuzzlesByMail #OneOffs #Detective #Mystery #WithinTheStory #LostInTheMachine #UnitedKingdom