Inspectors' Review:
STRAW
Small tiny objects that can be batted around
Box is comfortable for sleeping
Good papers for napping
Smell woodsy
STRAW
Boss' Review
As many know who have perused my reviews/justifications for sharing cat photos, I love Mysterious Package Company. The creator of Boundless Library, the company who makes A Feather in Dust, was one of the original founders of MPC before he left the company. In this frame of mind, think of Boundless Library as “old school” MPC with experiences like Curios and Conundrums, John Augur, Weeping Book, Tempus Fugit, etc. For those who have played MPC games before and loved the narrative style, I think you will enjoy it. For those unfamiliar, these games are heavy with narrative and mystery with puzzles sprinkled through out.
The premise of A Feather in Dust is that you are helping bring together a lost and unfinished book that was discovered by the Librarian in the Boundless library. In this world, books have agency and control; they feel and react. The Librarian wants your help finding the lost chapters of this book and over the course of six months will be sending you chapters as they are discovered. Your task is to piece together the jumbled story (the chapters come out in a mixture of letters, artifacts, maps, etc as the space time continuum doesn’t like making things easy on us) in order to see if you can piece together where the missing chapters may be by following the travels of the author and character in the story. Sounds easy, right?
There is also an element of online components to this experience. You receive an audio clip when you subscribe and also when you open the first chapter that provides additional information about the author or contextualizes the world this story is made in. The intension, I presume, is to provide players with a variety of mediums to work on, which I enjoy.
Back to the story, I thoroughly enjoyed piecing together the first chapter and a bit of history of this unknown author. You use newspaper articles, travel records, notes, and more and it does an excellent job in show a chronology in the narrative. It was also fascinating to google some of the words or places mentioned as it gave the story a tangible connection to the world I live in. I think for a first chapter, they nailed the narrative.
Now, this chapter appears to have no solvable puzzles so if you’re reading this because you’re looking for puzzle heavy stories than I would recommend not diving into this rabbit hole for the time being. There are whispers of puzzles (my one friend laughed at my description) with inscriptions on papers that do no make sense…YET. One thing I have learned from MPC (and the Boring Crimes Podcast by Boundless Library) is that the puzzles develop over time. I assume more clues and pieces of the puzzles will arrive in subsequent mailings. I cannot say how many puzzles there will be but I can say you will not be solving any puzzles in this chapter…a mystery, yes,but no puzzles. I found the mystery was well put together as they didn’t use much exposition to lead you towards the story. You were able to fully take in the artifact or document you held and notice little clues that would help slot it in the story. There are still some mysteries left but you leave the narrative excited for where the character is off too…but also apprehensive because of potential foreshadowing if you google enough.
In terms of customer service I found they pretty good. They are really quick to respond via Facebook messenger but much slower on email. They were helpful in setting up my account and alleviating my concerns when my tracking number wasn’t working.
Overall, I found this first chapter a fascinating introduction to feather in dust and I am excited to follow this journey. If you love strong narratives this is a good option as long as you don’t mind waiting for puzzles in the future. If you are interested in getting a better sense of Boundless library I recommend checking out their Boring Crimes podcast here.
I purchased this game myself during a sale (pay a lump some for a year subscription) but currently it is available for 40$ a month. Sign up for a free membership here to begin your journey!
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