Inspectors' Review:
Oh, an invitation for me?!?
Bite-sized paper perfect for my mouth!
Paper is excellent cushion material.
So...you're saying this trip to Italy is a business trip???
Why don't we ditch the work trip and go to this casino?!? They even gave us these playing cards!
You mean the mafia is also involved here?!?
Get out those opposable thumbs boss! I need you to move stuff for me.
Boss' Review:
Scattered Thoughts is the sixth game and season one's finale of the subscription-based puzzle experience by Enigma Fellowship, a German based company led by husband-and-wife duo, Anuj and Orsi. These games are released every alternate month and consist of 2–3-hour narratives puzzle experiences that range from exploring Italian vineyards to uncovering Mafia connections in an unsuspecting town. I have reviewed their previous experience, The Lost Knowledge, Scattered Cards, Submerged Sentinel, Monsters in the Wild and Dinner Party and have enjoyed the season so far that I was quite excited to open up this envelope. Now, let’s dive in!
Story:
The premise for Scattered Thoughts continues the spin off from Scattered Cards and Dinner Party as you travel to Italy to find a missing fellowship member while also receiving notice about potential threat to a justice department employee who was continuing the investigation into Sonneburg mafia. Mr. Gurges has tasked you to solve TWO cases this time around so you got to be quick!
I have to say the last few games have really done a great job tying together the interconnected universe in these games and Scattered Thoughts has this in spades. I loved the easter eggs and they felt really smooth and effortless in how they were executed and revealed. The overall story was good. Part One acted as a gentle introduction to the game but I found Part Two to have a stronger storyline with plenty of story development and the twists were timed perfectly as you made it through each section of puzzling. What I liked best was that this storyline was consistently in its progression while you move around the map a lot. You gained information that allowed you to piece together information without it simply being exposition trying to contextualize the transition – it was especially evident in Part Two where you break away from a traditional linear puzzle structure to having the freedom to explore a trio of puzzles in whatever order you choose. During this section of the game you gain information and clues that becomes useful in the later game and I felt gathering these clues helped me better understand the story. The game's ending also did an excellent job tying up loose ends while providing potential ideas for future games. I will note some of the audio voices were a little stiff, but the use of audio narrators has always been one of the things I love with these experiences because I struggle to picture things and hearing them makes such a difference while I read.
Puzzles:
In terms of puzzles, I felt Scattered Thoughts provided the most variety in puzzles in the series. Part One plays similar to the level of difficulty in the earlier games but Part Two definitely ramps of the difficulty. For Part One the key thing is the follow instructions and read the notes left behind while Part Two requires a bit of tracking between different components. You need to remember things from previous puzzles you solved and apply logic to get the clue for the next. I found the cipher in Part Two to be really interested and the various puzzles involving playing cards to be inventive and fresh. I would say logic puzzling plays a large part in these experiences and you need a keen eye to catch all the clues. A small symbol could be the clue you need to rifle through your papers for an item you stowed away earlier. Each item may have more than once use so don’t pack anything away – there are reset instructions after you complete the game.
Customer Service:
Customer service is the same as usual. They care for their players and really listen to them. They are quite active in the tabletop community and encourage players to provide feedback. At the end of the game they even offer a behind the scenes about the game. Their hint system is now quite comprehensive with images to provide guidance for those need a little visual aid and are placed right below where the solution needs to be imputed so you do not need to struggle between sites for assistance. A few times I really needed to images to help put things in order in my head (I can’t visualize things in my head) so those became really useful for me.
Conclusion:
Overall, I found Scattered Thoughts to be an excellent race against the clock experience, filled with exploration, intrigue, and puzzling! The puzzles carefully scaffolded players into each challenge and effectively used all components with intentionality that indicates everything had an important use. It wasn’t simply a pile of papers – you needed to really handle these puzzles to solve them by inspecting them, flipping them, turning them, etc. The bringing together of this universe was especially exciting for me as a story lover and I cannot wait to see what this will lead into with season two. I would say this episode was the perfect finale to the season and if you have been enjoying Enigma Fellowship so far then you will definitely enjoy this game!
Check out Enigma Fellowship here.
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