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

Where there’s a will…

Theme:

From the Gruzzle website:

Beloved philanthropist, Dolores Pumbleton, has died! Luckily, she left her massive fortune to her three grandchildren. Unluckily, she also left them a puzzling challenge. Can you help them solve their Nana’s puzzles and earn their inheritance? Sign up with Gruzzle HQ and receive this mystery in your mailbox. Don’t delay — the whole town is counting on you!

First Impressions:

The first Gruzzle, The Painting, was an intensely original, clever new subscription box that really blew all of our expectations for a first time puzzle box out of the water. The anticipation for The Will, therefore, was high. When it hit our porch, I couldn’t wait to see what was included inside!

High Points:

One thing I can definitely say about Gruzzle is that we are still loving the incredibly layered puzzling. We’re constantly impressed by how intricate everything is, and it is clear that a lot of work goes into each puzzle and prop. During the entire experience we were astounded at how well put together absolutely everything was. It was mind blowing how there were times we would come back to different items two or three different times to find that there was even more cryptic information hidden within something we just knew had to have been depleted on the last go round. We also continue to love how tactile everything is, the props and more papercraft based puzzles are so cleverly put together, and we love to see how detailed and densely packed with puzzling each bit is. Though a lot of the game is based on paper puzzling, the designers have done so much to ensure that it never feels basic. The level of creativity is amazing, and there were so many cool touches that we’d never come across before in this sort of game. Furthermore, a lot of work has gone into each interaction to ensure everything feels completely intuitive, and while some work has to be done in order to fully understand what to do, there are no logical leaps or inconsistencies to be found.

One thing we noted while playing is that we love how Gruzzle is how it is, at its core, just a super friendly and approachable experience. Most boxes have deep, dark mysteries or grisly murder investigations, and while I love that sort of thing, it is still really nice to tackle something a bit more light hearted. Gruzzle truly feels like a game that welcomes you in for a challenge and invites you to solve along at your own pace. However, even though the game is family friendly, it is overall still very complex and properly challenging, ensuring that enthusiasts will still get their puzzling money’s worth! Also, while the theme is somewhat lower stakes than, say, escaping a murderer or solving the crime of the century, it still manages to be incredibly engaging and we felt deeply immersed for the entire two hour game. To really drive home how well designed The Will is, there was a specific puzzle that fell into a genre we usually dislike, but it was designed in such a way that we had a lot of fun teaming up to take it down! The finale of the game was brilliant, and included yet another bonus puzzle that displayed all the best parts of a Gruzzle box fantastically.

Low Points:

In the previous Gruzzle box, we felt that the answers sort of took away from the experience, as they generally just named the next envelope to open. This time, they do feel overall more natural, but still fall into the same sort of category. Being an almost completely offline experience, I’m not sure how this can be made to feel more natural, but it’s one of the few critiques we have. One specific puzzle type shows up more than once, which feels repetitive, but is over quickly, so it isn’t an arduous thing. Finally, one particular puzzle that shows up later has an issue with tedious searching, and the presentation makes it somewhat more difficult to keep track of progress without making your own copies. Overall, though, these are very small things that didn’t detract overmuch from the experience.

Verdict:

Incredibly fresh and original, Gruzzle continues to demonstrate how incredibly creative they can be, and is fast becoming one of our favorite subscription boxes, easily! We adored this box, and absolutely recommend it to newcomers and enthusiasts alike, as the approachable, yet challenging puzzling is sure to be engaging for all types of puzzler! The Will ships November 2nd, and you can receive it by signing up by October 31st here! You can use the promo code FIRSTTIME to get $5 off your subscription!

9/10 (Excellent)

Full Disclosure: Gruzzle provided a complementary box.