The Deadbolt Mystery Society – Carnival of Chaos (Review)

Location: Your Home!

Players:  We recommend 1-4

Price: $24.99 per box, plus $4.99 shipping

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Theme:

From the Deadbolt Mystery Society website:

The Shadow Brothers’ Carnival of Chaos had only been setup in Valley Falls for a little more than a day when Madame Ruby was found murdered in her fortune teller’s wagon, bludgeoned to death with her own crystal ball.  Although the killer was efficient in their killing, they left Madame Ruby before they were certain she was dead.  In a last ditch effort to provide information about the one who murdered her, Madame Ruby managed to scrawl this note before passing over into the Great Beyond:  “The spirits will tell you who did this to me.” The prime suspects for the murder come from the freak show.  Those are the people you need to focus on.  However, if they won’t talk, maybe the spirits will.  There have been reports of some strange occurrences going on at night after the midway shuts down.  The carnies are claiming that something is using the midway games to leave cryptic messages.  So you have a murder investigation, a creepy carnival, and a midway that may or may not be haunted by ghosts who are seeking to shed some light on Madame Ruby’s murder by leaving messages amongst the test-your-luck games.

First Impressions:

I’ve found that The Deadbolt Mystery Society is at it’s best when delving into the supernatural and spooky, and though their murder mysteries tend to be excellent as well, in my opinion when things get creepy, the fun factor ramps up! When I found out that our friends from S.T.A.L.K., who previously assisted on The Haunting of Indigo House, were returning to investigate the haunted midway of the Shadow Brother’s Carnival of Chaos, I was immediately excited to delve into the mystery!

High Points:

It was time to solve our first mystery at our new house! Obviously, we wanted to make sure it was great, so we grabbed the newest Deadbolt box and got to sleuthing!Continuing to innovate with some of the usual parts of a Deadbolt box, the suspects have been complied within a snazzy booklet advertising the Carnival! The haunted midway is presented excellently, and a map of the carnival itself is helpful in portraying the area. S.T.A.L.K.’s new website is excellent, and I’m really enjoying the expansion of the most recent Deadbolt boxes via substantial websites and social media pages.

The game flow is really engaging, and though there is no set path through the puzzles, it feels like everything leads into each separate piece smoothly. The tidbits of information that are hidden throughout the experiencer really help tie everything together as you solve your way through, and there are some truly clever intuitive deductions to make between pieces of evidence that we really enjoyed. The satisfaction of solving this box is real. To help new players along, a tips page has been included with this box, and those who don’t quite know where to start or are new to the whole experience will definitely benefit from giving it a once over. We’ve become experts at this, and there was still some good information included for us to keep in mind as well! A link to the finale has been included as well, circumventing the break of immersion that seeking out the Deadbolt website generally entails, and allows the box to keep the experience whole for the full game.

Try your luck, and don’t mind the ghosts! These games are scary good! (I’m sorry, I’ll see myself out.)

Low Points:

After The Cabin’s astounding leap forward in storytelling, it was just slightly disappointing to return to the previous formula. It’s a very small change, but it was a lot of fun to solve the mystery in the moment, so we hope that returns one day! One particular puzzle shows up twice with slightly different coding, but with the exact same solving method. This type of puzzle also showed up in a previous recent box, which causes these to feel even more redundant overall. One of these in particular is very hard to differentiate between, which is much more frustrating than it needs to be. A bit clearer of a printout would help immensely in this situation. One particular elimination is circumstantial at best, and though we reasoned out the solution without help, we required the solution page in order to figure out why a certain suspect was innocent. The evidence was very light, to say the least, so an extra puzzle or story note would’ve helped clear this one up significantly.

Verdict:

Though not quite on the level of The Cabin’s masterful storytelling, the mystery conveyed within Carnival of Chaos is excellent, providing hours of supernatural puzzling and sleuthing to enjoy. I love that the most recent boxes have delved into the realm of the spooky, and am excited to see that continue with December’s The Toymaker! Join the Deadbolt Mystery Society here! Right now, you can get 30% off your first box with the Promo Code ESCAPE30! You can also see the rest of our Deadbolt Mystery Society reviews here!

8.5/10 (Great)

Full Disclosure: The Deadbolt Mystery Society provided a complementary box.