Location: Your Home!

Players:  We recommend 1-4

Price: $30.00 month to month, $87.00 for 6 months, $172 for a year’s subscription

Layers upon layers of puzzling

Theme:

From the Gruzzle website:

A world-renowned museum. A famous painting — stolen! A forgery in its place. A threatening letter. Can you help the museum recover the missing masterpiece before the press and the public discover the theft? Sign up with Gruzzle HQ and receive this mystery in your mailbox. Don’t delay — the museum is counting on you!

First Impressions:

We stumbled upon Gruzzle recently via one of the many fantastic puzzling groups we are a part of on Facebook, and once we’d spoken with the designers for a bit, we couldn’t wait to see what they had in store for their first box! Featuring one of my favorite paintings of all time, and an interesting premise, I was raring to get started once the box arrived on our doorstep!

High Points:

The premise of Gruzzle is simple, a client contacts Gruzzle HQ, and requests help working through a conundrum they are involved with. These cases are packed with puzzles, ciphers, and brain-bending enigmas to solve, and are completely self contained, requiring no outside apps or technology to complete. Though we do love the many subscription boxes and at home puzzling experiences we regularly play, I can’t say that many don’t rely on tech in some way, shape, or form. In fact, I can only think of a couple of the myriad we’ve tried, and neither are a subscription box, so this definitely sets Gruzzle apart as a great, unplugged adventure for families and puzzle enthusiasts alike! The first thing we noticed about The Painting was the fantastic quality of the props included. I don’t think we’ve ever come across a first entry for a subscription box that has such great items included within the game. Not only are there multiple tactile props to play around with, there is an actual locked box inside! I’ve only ever seen physical locks like this in more expensive subscriptions, so it was great to see this sort of touch at a more reasonable price point. I knew we were in for something special the moment we’d opened the box.

The puzzles included were an absolute delight to work through as well. Each stage of the mystery involved some incredibly creative solves, all of which integrated into the theme well. Though the story was somewhat light, it allowed for the focus to remain squarely on the puzzles, which were truly the star of the show. The puzzles were multilayered and clues included were multi-functional unlike anything I’ve seen before in this sort of medium. I really loved how we were able to come back to certain items and discover ever more information by using different new props and solving methods revealed by other solutions. It was truly satisfying to crack each new code, and not one puzzle felt stale or overdone. Even when using an old standby of puzzle boxes, a code most enthusiasts will be familiar with, Gruzzle implements another layer or two of puzzling to ensure the interaction isn’t just another code breaking puzzle. Almost everything we came across was something new to us, or a well implemented refinement of more classic puzzling. The game flow was linear, and everything flowed smoothly as we made intuitive logical connections, working our way to the great conclusion.

Low Points:

During our experience, there was a particular misprint that allowed us to obtain a clue very early on, and it dulled the luster of a certain reveal since we had already sussed out the answer. We also had one puzzle that required a certain rule to be followed that wasn’t overtly clear at first. It was simple enough to make the connection, but resulted in some confusion since we weren’t sure initially what was going wrong. I’ve discussed both of these items with the designers, however, and the full release should negate these concerns. We also noticed that since the experience takes place, for the most part, completely offline, this experience differs somewhat in that most solutions direct players towards opening new envelopes, which for us was a little anti climactic. The designers have some good ideas on how to ensure solving remains exciting, however, (and the puzzles are more than a delight to solve,) so I remain confident that Gruzzle will continue to iterate and evolve!

Verdict:

I am thrilled to say that Gruzzle’s first outing is an absolutely brilliant time! The designers have done an excellent job ensuring the experience is fresh and delivers multiple satisfying ah ha moments. We cannot wait to see what the designers have in store for their next box. I highly recommend subscribing now, as The Painting will ship on September 8th, 2020! Sign up by September 6th here, and you can use the promo code FIRSTTIME to get $5 off your subscription!

8.5/10 (Great)

Full Disclosure: Gruzzle provided a complementary box.