Game played first in January 2019 but replayed April 2021 with friend.
Inspectors' Review:
CARDBOARD LET ME EAT IT!!!!
Giant paper to lie on - count me in!
The smell of aged paper is so comforting to us immortals.
Is that...string?????!!!!!
Fake hay!!
You hand me this puzzle to solve...but I am busy basking in the glow of artificial light to help you.
Boss' Review:
I’m not sure if I have mentioned this (most likely I have) but I have recently been replaying MPC games with a friend who just bought them. These were games I played pre-Mystery Inspectors so I took the opportunity to take lots of cat photos and write reviews of the games. For today, we are looking at Filigree in Shadow.
Filigree In Shadow was launched as a Kickstarter in early 2016. After the Kickstarter was completed and all backers received their games, it was added to the MPC catalogue, albeit with a few changes. I recently acquired the KS version in addition to the current addition and will add my thoughts later. This game is one of the most expensive MPC games (299 USD) and that mainly is because of the artifact and the array of documents.
Filigree In Shadow is a Gothic horror experience that surrounds a series of mysteries and tragedies happening in one beautiful house, build by architect Henry Griggs, over the decades in 19th Century England. You receive this unknown inheritance that contains clues and strange writing that that the sender hopes you can use to figure out whether this home is haunted or if there is something more nefarious at foot. Over the course of THREE mailings, you learn about the joy and fear the residents of this house felt and see if you can truly understand what happened.
I found the narrative in this experience to be extremely well done. There are articles, flip books, diaries, letters to friends, and doctor’s notes (and more!) all working to enrich the narrative development without exposition. You are able to piece together the clues and build the chronology of events to see if there are similarities between each family and to identify what went wrong for each. I will say it is a lot of reading but as a reader I greatly enjoyed it. I also loved how aged the documents were and really appreciated how they added to the theme and mood. The ending is ambiguous where you are left with more speculation and theories that a quaint epilogue but I find it works for the mood. Be aware if you prefer nice succinctly summarized endings that this will not be provided here.
As for puzzles…there’s really only ONE puzzle if you have the current running of the game. It is a large cipher that is spread throughout the mailings. The cipher is quite ingenious! I would say if you want to solve the cipher on your own, avoid opening mailing three (the big box) until you are prepared to move forward as mailing three will show you how to solve the cipher (you still will have to decrypt everything yourself). There is also a flip book with a little activity but I wouldn’t call it a puzzle per say. In this frame of mind, this game is puzzle light. Now, if you had the Kickstarter version you would have had more activities to do but only one of them would actually do something for the game which is the jigsaw puzzle, which was replayed with just a printed copy of the map in the current running. The rest (of the Kickstarter version) included a paper dollhouse you can assemble, a zoetrope, and a few additional artifacts that just built mood. As someone who has played both versions – I would say only the physical puzzle was actually something I wanted to do. I loved the jigsaw puzzle but it does take quite a bit of time. Of note, quite a few backers had it that pieces were missing which was one of the reasons they scrapped it in the current game.
Customer service is great. My kickstarter version was purchased second hand. My current game (purchased 2019) did have the main artifact broken upon arrival but the company was extremely helpful and shipped a new one in the beautiful wooden box of the third mailing.
Overall, this was my third MPC experience and I thought it was a beautiful story to unpack. It has mystery and a little puzzle intrigue to keep you going. You’re left with a hollow feeling at the end as you realize the truth behind this house but I think a good horror experience does that. If you are looking for a puzzle filled experience, look away. If you’re looking for an affordable game, look away. But…if you love exquisitely haunted storytelling that you can touch and experience I think this was beautiful.
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