The Musicians by Gruzzle: A Puzzling Company

Inspectors' Review:

• The paper is delicious!

• Yet...not nutritious.

• Paper is also comfy.

• These guitar picks are also excellent...for teeth flossing!

• The boss said no to that.

• I think to solve this we just need to look at it from a different angle.

• Gosh, puzzling can be so tiring!

• Though, so fun!

• Team work makes the dream work here!

---

Boss' Review:

Gruzzle: A Puzzling Company is the brain child of mother-daughter duo Joan and Eureka and has just completed it’s first season of monthly puzzles (six puzzles). Gruzzle is a monthly subscription puzzle box experience filled with puzzles to solve that span museum theft to delving into secret organizations. A fellow puzzle friend brought the last game of the season over to my house, The Musicians, and the inspectors and I had to get a taste of this new puzzle subscription.

This game follows you being tasked by Gruzzle HQ to assist in the investigation of the disappearance of Frank Silz, a famous conductor. This conductor is a lover of puzzles, as well, and his partner and collaborator needs help unraveling his clues to see what has happened to him. Hopefully you are up to the task!

For the narrative, I was pretty happy with the sent up. As you solve a puzzle it directs you to a room to explore which is hidden in an envelope. Each envelope contained a little narrative, written in second person and I found it to be concise and yet was well written. It provided a drive to continue looking and there was a small amount of character development. These narratives provide additional clues but it doesn’t supersede the light narrative going on. The conclusion also was a little too easy but, still, satisfactory. The most important thing for me was that the use of the narrative was balanced with the puzzles. I find that if a puzzle game is going to provide a narrative I like them to truly use them rather than use them a rails. This is purely a preference but I found the narrative was used effectively and had enough content to stand on its own from the puzzles. I will emphasize, though, I would still say puzzles take precedence over narrative in this game but what narrative is there was well executed.

In terms of puzzles, I found I liked the mix of types. The game is pretty much paper based but there was physical puzzles, ciphers, logic, and pattern. I really enjoyed the puzzles that revealed hidden messages that were not overt and there were quite a few of those. I will note, there was one reveal puzzle that missed the mark for me because it needed to be fiddled with in such tight perimeters that I couldn’t get it to work. I also found the solutions to the puzzles were not strong. They ultimate goal was each puzzle would direct you to a room to explore but you have a list of envelopes so by the end you already know the last envelope without having to solve it. I think something like locking the rooms with a password might have been beneficial to make things less obvious. Overall, I found I enjoyed the construction of the puzzles. I thought they were well clued and were thematic for the game. They had a good variety of difficulty so you aren’t took overwhelmed. There was one puzzle I struggled with because it was so precise but I was easily able to move on using the hint system.

For customer service, my friend has received each game promptly. The were well packaged and had good graphics and construction. I do think they could ship in a envelope rather than a box based on the contents.The hint system was solid and able to provide good nudges to move along. I also enjoyed finding a secret metapuzzle which unified the six episodes and encourages me to play the others (we kind of played them out of order).

In the end, I found Gruzzle’s The Musician to be an engaging and well-constructed game that had a balance of light narrative and fun puzzles. There are slight recommendations I have to enhance immersion but as it stands I was really happy playing this with friends. I recommend this for someone who likes a bit of narrative with their puzzles and someone who enjoys variety in their paper puzzles. This game took around two hours to complete and costs around 30$ a month which is quite affordable. I am excited to try out their other games in the first season!

If you are interesting in looking into Gruzzle, check out their website here!