Kara’s Note: This review was brought to you by me! 🙂

Location: Your Home!

Players:  We recommend 1-4

Price: $29.95 per box

Are those… bells?

Theme:

From the Sleuth Kings website:

Sullivan’s office has been ransacked and one thing is clear – the Moretti crime family is behind the break-in. The thieves were after a diamond and found one – just not the one they wanted. Instead, they stole a wedding ring that once belonged to Sullivan’s late mother. Worse, before they could sell the ring, they managed to lose it. Can you help Sullivan race against the Moretti family to get his mother’s ring back?

First Impressions:

FYI, Though I’ve attempted to be vague, there may be some potential, unintended (but hopefully harmless) meta-spoilers. Read at your own risk. 🙂

While waiting for Brandon to set up the box and email Sullivan, I decided to take a quick skim of the “Investigation Report”. I immediately noticed “ring” and “keep this from Celeste” and became SUPER excited about the not-so-subtle implications! I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but do humbly propose to all Sullest fans: do this box ASAP as this is an ultra-important case! 😊

Brace yourselves, this is the most important case you’ll have solved to date!

High Points:

This was such a fun and light-hearted story! It’s pretty obvious that I particularly enjoy the Sullest boxes and am (perhaps unusually) very invested in their relationship, so it’s no surprise that this is one of my favorite boxes of late.

Sleuth Kings is fantastic at story continuity as well as character consistency. It always gives us some chuckles to see Sullivan’s consistent character among the cases – in this case, his hilarious attempt at being mysterious, (for a detective, he’s not the best at keeping secrets – at least from us.) A seemingly small thing, but I was also happy to see that Celeste’s contribution to the case, (via her hint system,) was updated to reflect how she can still be involved while still being kept in the dark. I was also delighted to be instantly gratified with the epilogue for this case – and that’s all I’m going to say about that. ^_^

Also, it’s very amusing to me to think of the big bad crime family of the case figuring out how to code their secret messages into such family friendly material. We inadvertently guessed what the answer to the final solution of the case would be as a joke, and were pleased when that turned out to be right!

Storyline aside, the box itself was a fun and smooth experience. It was probably one of the fastest boxes we’ve solved. Overall, I really appreciated how the puzzles were set up. One puzzle in particular was structured in an extremely helpful way. When we first started solving it, I was concerned that there would be multiple possible answers, leading to a guess and check situation. However, I was happy to have worried for nothing!

The box was enhanced by its cute and well-designed props. In addition to being visually exciting, it also made it easy to find and link together props and clues. Even though some clues and solutions were exclusive to a single prop, they inter-wove with the other material as the puzzles built upon each other in pretty straightforward and linear fashion. It’s amazing how multi-purposeful everything can be.

Pondering Points:

We did end up bypassing one of the puzzle interactions by accident, and it was very clear to us that we missed something. After we solved the case, we used Celeste’s hint system to help us backtrack and figure out what was supposed to happen. It was certainly an interesting puzzle and subtle by nature. I’m not sure if this means the puzzle was hackable and/or the clues weren’t strong enough for us, (though honestly, we could’ve misinterpreted the puzzle/clues completely.) However, I suppose this can also be a good sign, (in a way,) in that clearly the solution makes sense! In retrospect, I do think we would have easily solved it the right way had we looked at the Clue Analysis or Celeste’s website though, and would highly recommend them if you’re stuck.

While we found the puzzles to be overall fairly easy, it’s very possible the clues to the final puzzle need to be stronger or contain more direct hints for newer players who don’t have a puzzling background, (I certainly would’ve never thought of it before playing these boxes with Brandon.) The method of solving this puzzle is likely either to be something you know or don’t know. Seasoned players may find the in-puzzle hints to be enough, but newer players may need to utilize the hint system more or possibly do some internet searching.

Verdict:

This box is one of my personal Sleuth Kings favorites, and I would highly recommend it. I think it’s a great introduction to puzzling for newer players, and would also be a fun adventure for veteran sleuths. I’m also super stoked to see what’s next for Sullest! You can purchase this and other previous cases from the Sleuth King’s archives here, and if you’d like to subscribe to upcoming adventures, you can use the promo code ESCAPEADVENTURE to get $5 off your subscription here! You can also read the rest of our Sleuth Kings reviews here!

8/10 (Great)

Full Disclosure: Sleuth Kings provided a complementary box.