Inspectors' Review:
Tasy Spider
Lots a paper to lie on
Quite a twist there was!
Boxes were small be sittable
Boxes are fun to knock off table - take note!
There's some crazy stuff happening at this manor - Boss be warned!
Boss' Review:
Chilling Screams is a UK subscription service I was a little apprehensive to try. There are not too many comprehensive reviews on it and from the few people in my puzzle community who played it, I got the sense it was getting mixed reviews. That said, when a friend offered to pass them along to me I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to play and give my thoughts of this series. This will only focus on the first season of their Subscription – Manor of the Damned.
The premise of MOTD is that a solicitor to the recently deceased actor, Charles Pryce, is seeking your help to investigate a series of strange occurrences happening around the manor. Each chapter asks you to investigate and either verify or debunk any strange occurrences. These boxes are not stand alone and information from previous boxes plays a part in the others. As you progress you learn all is not as it should be at the Pryce estate. This game does contain a narrative that stretches across the boxes. You are piecing together the story through reading letters, examining clues, listening to audio, and watching videos. With this is mind, this has a pretty strong narrative components and each box has a letter to introduce the new box and what has happened since you received the last box.
In terms of puzzles, there are ciphers, searching puzzles, deduction, and a few odds and ends. The set up has the online evidence portal lock certain elements of the game and by solving these puzzles you can get the answer for these locked pages. Overall, I found the puzzle good – they weren’t anything new to me but they were well constructed for the most part and by the end of the season I did really enjoy them. I want to note this is the first series from this company and as such I do not want to compare it to companies that have had years to improve. There were some puzzles issues with formatting but they didn’t impede puzzle solving. I also really appreciated having the website to guide me a little and the hint site was helpful – though I wish they scaffolded clues a bit more. I will also had some puzzles became redundant to me as I used deduction to solve the box goal and as such the puzzles were just more clarifying if my initial thought was correct.
As for customer service, I have no dealings with the company. The person who gave me the game received all components in their boxes and they all arrived safe and sound.
Overall, I think this was a decent game. The story was a little cheesy and disjointed in the beginning ( also wished there was a smoother transition between boxes but it really improved with box 4) but as they progressed I did become quite interested. There was a twist or that I wasn’t expected but I could think, “ahhh that makes sense!” I also had a good few moments of real satisfaction when solving something. That said, for the price they sell it on their website (on top of it being an UK based game, which makes shipping more expensive), I would likely not purchase unless I was splitting it amongst friends. I really think they should consider a print and play option to provide a more affordable option as I think this easily could be a print and play. There are some extra components placed in boxes but there are no puzzles on them so an image could do the same thing. At 50 CAD a month plus shipping, it would have been my most expensive subscription. To sum up, this series has promise and I’ll likely play the second season but be warned this game does have some rough edges as it develops but I enjoyed the ending.