This review has been a LONG time coming! Curious Correspondence Club is a monthly subscription based puzzle company hailing from good old Toronto, Canada, not far from where I live. They initially launched in 2020 and I paid for the full year subscription after hearing they are an off-shoot of Mysterious Package Company (if you know me then you know I LOVE MPC). I had started playing these before I launched my blog and while I posted the first four chapters last summer (reposted from Facebook) I took a long hiatus of playing after getting frustrated with Chapter 5. I finally came back to it and with a little help from friends we finally solved it! And here I am to share my review…I also have 9 other envelopes to puzzle through now….
Story:
If you are curious you can check our my previous reviews here and here. Chapter Five takes off right after the ending of Chapter Four as you drive away with your stolen motorcycle to get away from the bad guys. Luck is on your side when, as your engine struggles to drive on fumes, a women finds you in the desert, Millie. As you speak with Millie and share your adventure you discover your bike contains contains stolen pages from her father's journal, Dr. Milton, who was an archeologist! She shares how she knows some of the people you have met on your journey and right now she is looking for what her father believed was a fallen star in a nearby excavated site. This might be the next clue you are looking for and your task is to find and open the the hidden location to the next star.
I have always admire the storytelling that is used to provide a baseline for players. They act as book ends to each chapter and as a story lover I appreciate the element of progression it provides. Even the journal of Dr. Milton provided a little story so you became a little more familiar with the character, which is key when you consider the name of Chapter 6. The endings are a little predictable but, at the same time, the use of character helps provide variety as you never know where you are going next. For people that love puzzling over stories, it is also pretty easy to jump right into the puzzles and there is no story limiting the progression of puzzles but I would say there is enough story to engage narrative focused players as well.
Puzzles:
In terms of puzzles, I found them puzzles really interesting and fun. I loved how each paper (front and back) is used to introduce a new puzzle component and there were some fun aha moments with the altar we enjoyed. That said, we needed more sign posting, even with the hint system. I initially tried to play this game on my own back in late 2020/early 2021 but set it aside when I got lost on what to do after solving the first half of the first puzzle. For my group, I found with the flipping between pages that some things which were assumed obvious were not stated for clarity. For example, there are four sites with perimeters on a map but those sites aren’t actually outlined in the map. You had to just assume to divide the map into four…unless we missed something? We had a similar thing happen again when we had to assemble the altar. Now, admittedly, each alter piece had on the flip side a site number with a separate puzzle that I assume we were make the connection that way but we didn't see that. It was moments like this where we got frustrated because we had everything else but could not make the next step.
Setting aside these signposts, I want to reiterate that the puzzles were really fun again! Once I understood the expectations (in some case back solving) I appreciated the puzzle structures and found them to be fascinating. I also really enjoyed the scale puzzles and the layers that one contained. They use lots of observation and pattern recognition for this game and the journal is essential so we found having one person handle the book while the other handles the map/altar made things easier. It was brains and brawns!
Customer Service:
In terms of customer service, I want to highlight that the hint system could easily be used to help address some of my comments. The hint system didn’t take into account people might not be aware of orientation and so with the altar puzzle we were really struggling with those hints. I didn’t connect with the company for this game because we did end up figuring things out but I will say when I’ve spoken to them in the past they were extremely helpful and were making real time changes to the hint system to aid players which I loved.
Conclusion:
Overall, I found Chapter Five to have an interesting story and some fun logic puzzling. I have found this to be the second chapter two date where I needed more sign posting but as this is their first season, I know it is a learning curve. I am excited with how they ended this chapter to see what happens next…at the Milton Manor.
Check out the company here!
Comments