Inspectors' Review:
There is LOTS of paper.
Sniff sniff. Smells like a mystery!
This photo has drawn out attention…we cannot tell you why.
The boss had to break up an argument regarding the right way to sit on evidence papers…
There appears to be GHOSTS in one of these games!
We posted out a newspaper for you…you’re welcome!
Boss' Review:
Just to reiterated I am doing MEC reviews in couplets because a) they generally have the same format so I really only need to review the narrative and experience and b) I have so many of them now I will bombard by review page if I do them on at a time (also I don’t anticipate them to be long reviews).
Now, back to the reviews.
Archon Genomics
This experience by Mystery Experience Company (now know as Murder Mystery in a Box) is the first of their series from way back in 2016. I decided if I’m going to start interested in a new box series that I need to start from the beginning. The one caveat (and disclaimer) is that many of the links for this game are dead so I had to find myself from MEC fans who dutifully saved all the data when they heard the creator was not going to maintain games after a year.
Archon Genomics was initially an one off premium experience but later was adapted in a larger meta-mystery that plays throughout the early MEC games. This game follows you being tasked with investigating the murder of a scientist at a biotech facility that appears to be hiding some from the public…something more that just a simple DNA analysis. You are giving a photos of suspects, a file, some of the victims desk contents, and sent off to complete your own investigation to figure out who wanted this man dead.
I found the narrative to be good and the mystery to be rather interesting. It really branched out to a greater concept than just revenge or crime of passion. I enjoyed the depth to the narrative and there was lots of reading material to immerse yourself it. That said, I underestimated this story. There were little things I disregarded because I thought it was a 30$ game but in reality that thing I disregarded ended up being key information to help me solve the crime. I got the killer wrong in this scenario but I have the motive correct (I’ll give myself half a gold star XD). I did find the introduction to the meta-mystery to be a bit random but I hope it becomes a little more obvious as I continue the series.
This experience did actually contain puzzles in the form of two ciphers and a math puzzle. The one cipher was a fun substitution cipher and the other one was so simple but so hard! It also was quite tedious. This puzzle is relevant to the meta-story which is only relevant if you plan to continue onto in chronology with the games. I also found the answer ended up being something the pops up elsewhere…The math puzzle isn’t difficult but sign posting is loose. The one thing I will note is that when I was accessing the website regarding these puzzles (I used wayback machine) I found I had to jump between 2016 and 2018 website archives because a locked pdf that is part of the game wasn’t available in the 2016 site but another puzzle was missing from the 2018 site that would unlock the pdf. This was likely not an issue when the site was fully functional but for those playing right now, it’s a good thing to note.
Overall, I enjoyed the puzzles, found the story interesting, but underestimated the game which left me a little disappointed. It’s quite a contrast to the more current content and I look forward to seeing how the meta-puzzle contributes to the series.
The Cornstalk Hotel
MEC broke off into a side series for a brief period before shutting it down. This series focus on paranormal exploration of real locations steeped in history and haunting. The Cornstalk Hotel is the second of the four games that exist.
The premise of this game follows you assisting in the investigation of two paranormal entities haunting the infamous Cornstalk Hotel, which is located in New Orleans. There were quite a few audio files for this games but I found only one of them actually provided a real clue in the deduction frame work that these MEC games want. The set up was fairly straightforward as you have a list of potential ghosts and whittle it down using all the components around you. I solved this one in about 2 hours was leisurely reading. All the online components still work for the time being as I post this review. I liked the set up but there was one aspect to the second ghost that through me off…just know that while there is a list with many names of it that it might be missing the one you need.
Overall, it was fun. Not super difficult or time intensive and I felt satisfied. I’ve said this before, I see these games for a snack puzzles. They are great for when you don’t have time for a full length game but you want some narrative and end goal that satisfies more that a jigsaw puzzle or sudoku.
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