Location: Your Home!
Players: We recommend 1-4
Price: $24.99 per box, plus $4.99 shipping
What do you do with a murdered pirate, early in the morning?
Theme:
The “Voyage on the Black Dagger” was meant to be a luxury cruise with a twist. All the passengers would be dressed as pirates, and a puzzle filled scavenger hunt would be hosted, boasting a $25,000 prize to the winner! As with most high stakes games however, conspiracies arise, and those hatched aboard the Black Dagger have resulted in murder! You’ll need to sift through the evidence, as well as the cruise ship’s ill fated scavenger hunt, and determine what went wrong before the case gets washed out to sea!
First Impressions:
Pirates are somewhat of a weakness of mine. Though a common escape room trope that is sometimes looked down upon by many, I nevertheless tend to get excited for swashbuckling experiences. Traitor promised to be an exciting twist on the pirate theme, by inserting the impetus for the piratical theme into a game within the game, and pitting us against our toughest opponent yet, university professors dressed as pirates!
High Points:
Traitor’s story definitely pays off well, delivering a great twist on the pirate genre while still delivering further excellent story twists consistently throughout the experience. Highly original themes are one thing, but without puzzles, they won’t hold up. Luckily, Traitor is densely packed with some great puzzling threads, and some of the most challenging deductions to date for a Deadbolt mystery. All of these deductions are well integrated into the game, and add a new element to the sleuthing. Witnesses are appropriately cryptic, setting up some fantastically devious cyphers that seem incredibly cryptic initially, but with a bit of out of the box thinking, resolve into enormously satisfying moments of revelation. There are several tactile and creative puzzles that have been included which add an excellent perspective element to the game. Several times, we would be mulling over a specific item, when it would suddenly click with another once we hit upon the visual clues within each piece of evidence. The puzzle threads are cleverly integrated into the story as well, delineating specific levels of the game, ensuring players are given intuitive hints as to what needs to be worked on at any given time without explicitly saying so. The on board scavenger hunt is well done, and it’s inclusion as part of the mystery creates a memorable run of puzzles that evoke the feeling of a mini escape room. One particular puzzle we solved in the early stages of the game got us better acquainted with the suspects and their personalities by giving us a tactile task that correlated with the suspect cards, and set up further clues for the remainder of the game.
The Deadbolt Mystery Society recently announced that in order to ensure their products are better protected from the elements, they would be paring down the dimensions of the boxes in order to fit within mailboxes. As such, the physical items within this game have been reduced in size, I assume, to test how the game would work within a smaller delivery system. In fact, I think it works better, packing just as much puzzling and mystery into reduced props, making much more room on our table to survey every clue included, and preventing larger pages from obscuring smaller items at inopportune times. I’m also looking forward to the smaller boxes, since they’ll definitely be easier to store.
A mystery big enough for the High Seas!
Low Points:
A late game puzzle was worded in a way that caused it to become an unintentional red herring for us. It seemed to set up a second layer of puzzle to round out the box, but it was looking for something far more specific and less broad than we inferred. The suspect elimination was more challenging for this mystery, but there is one clue that allowed us a bit of a shortcut to our accusation. This came late in the game however, so it only allowed a small jump for us. I believe this clue is meant to confirm the accusation, but it is possible to reach this point without having properly combed through all the eliminations just yet, so it can circumvent some investigation.
Verdict:
Traitor is a great new adventure from The Deadbolt Mystery Society, including a phenomenal game flow wrapped within a hugely original theme and storyline. The intuitive nature of this game ensures it remains approachable for newer players, but there’s still plenty of challenge for Deadbolt veterans! I recommend picking it up as a one time box purchase if you get the chance. As always, I definitely recommend subscribing for future boxes as well, especially since October’s creepy clown box, The Last Laugh, is coming up! 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!
9/10 (Excellent)
Full Disclosure: The Deadbolt Mystery Society provided a complementary box.
Escape Room Adventurer 