La Famiglia by Puzzling Pursuits

Inspectors' Review:

• This guy looks shady...you should keep an eye on him!

• You mean...I actually have to help with the puzzles?!?!?! That's crazy talk!

• Here...I moved the paper closer to you. Did that help??

• Naps are needed for the puzzling excursion!

• This menu has a puzzling in it...there's your clue from me.

• You keep staring at this letter but that isn't the puzzling...you need to use your head, geez!

• I'll nap while you figure this out.

• Reinforcement came to supervise.

Boss' Review:

La Famiglia

La Famiglia is a table top puzzle experience made by California based, Puzzling Pursuits. They launched their company during the wave of puzzling experiences that flooded the market in 2020 and I finally got my hands on one of their games to try out! I will note their website says they ship only within the USA but I believe international players can potentially buy if they email the company. La Famiglia is their second game with Blackbrim: 1876 being their first.

The premise of La Famiglia follows the FBI contacting you to aid their investigation on a off-shoot mafia in Chicago called La Famiglia. They have an inside informant who has collected evidence that may reveal La Famiglia’s next ploy and who they are affiliated with but, as of yet, they have been unable to decode these materials. You, being the codebreaking expert, are perfect for the job! The story is broken down into two parts where the first part is to uncover the ploy and the second is the FBI’s follow up into catching the Mafia in their illegal activities. I enjoyed the division of two parts so you can split up play time if 4-5 hours isn’t something you can do in one session. As for the narrative, it’s more of a premise than anything else. The conclusion of each part does have a short conclusion from the FBI but the puzzles themselves don’t progress the narrative or provide additional detail on character or plot development. In this frame of mind, this experience is definitely puzzle over narrative. I will note the premise is pretty good. It provided good framing for the eclectic puzzles and the theme of each puzzle made sense but the answers of each puzzle did not do anything other than push you to the “meta” puzzle. I feel there was opportunity to add to the story with the answers.

In terms of puzzles they were good. I found the set up and mechanics of the puzzles were neat and some were quite fun but others were a little more tedious to do them over and over again. Also math puzzles :P Always my weakness! Over the 12 puzzles, I believe 2-3 were misses which isn’t bad. I think my struggle was needing better hints and more of a payout for solving the tedious puzzles. I will also say none of the puzzles really WOWED me but I did enjoy part 1 much more than part 2. I think if there was more of a narrative (I found part 1 had more narrative) then it would offset the traditional puzzles but as it stands they were good puzzles but with the boom of puzzles games there are others that stood out more. I did like how inputting the final puzzle on the website opened up a conclusion paragraph to provide that satisfaction of achievement but when inputting the answer of the puzzle a fun opportunity could have been to add personality to the FBI Agent or you by responding to your discovery (either with humour or sarcasm). Essentially, since the puzzles were the main focus of this game, I found they were well designed but there wasn’t anything ground breaking.

In terms of customer service, this game was purchased by a friend to play with so I have no experience with their customer service. I did find their hint system was good with the exception to the one word puzzle (could have used a bit more help) and was easy to use and follow. I touched on in the puzzle paragraph the inputting of solutions for the puzzles could have better payout to enhance the storyline. If there was more balance with a story and puzzles this game could definitely grab more attention from players.

In the end, if you are looking for a puzzle game to work on in the evenings or on a relaxing afternoon and aren’t looking to hurt your brain, I would say La Famiglia is a good choice. I would compare in terms of feel to Deadbolt or Murder Mystery in the Box as those games are good for puzzle/deduction fixes and they are easy and comfortable. The price, at this time, is around 30$ which is on par with these monthly subscriptions. The quality is good with nice stationary detail and the website is well set up. I just wish more story was present. I am intrigued to try out their next game to see how this company develops!

Check our Puzzling Pursuits here.