I was recently contact by Jing at puzzle post to have a preview of their brand new dinner party game, The Secret Set, having played a few of their other games over lock-down, and enjoying them a lot, I was excited to receive my copy and get to playing!
Puzzle Post arrives, inconspicuously enough in a simply decorated envelope, but what lies within is a high-quality product. There are 9 puzzles to crack each giving a 2 digit code. The real skill in the game design of Puzzle Post is that the puzzles can be tackled in any order, and part of the fun is figuring out which puzzle is which and what number puzzle it is! This is such an interesting and fun mechanic that is backed up by a “checker” on the website, so you can see if each individual part is correct with no penalties to your game at all. The Secret Set developed on this further with a handy key being almost the first puzzle to work out!
The production values in the materials within the secret set are excellent, with everything being produced in high quality print, with excellent, realistic detail! It really took me back to my younger years of going to Leeds festival and all the maps and promo stuff I’d get, I’m not going to recount the whole story here, you’ll have to grab yourself a copy and play it!
There are 2 copies of all the materials in a game, which is fantastic for bigger groups and, even in my team of 2 it meant we could look at different sides of a page at once. A really nice and thoughtful touch.
The gameplay in The Secret Set is a lot of fun, in the design of game, realism comes first and the answers, solutions and puzzles themselves are revealed intrinsically through the media provided by the game.
Puzzles types are wide-ranging and focus on observation, searching, maths, some kind-of physical and sleuthing! A really good mix of puzzle types that are sure to let every play have their moment!
Each and every puzzle is a joy to solve, even some which took us a little longer to come to their conclusion proved sound in their logic!
The puzzles are logical and fair, and whilst a puzzle may seem “out there” at first glance, once the solution is sought and found, and all becomes clear there are moments of “why didn’t I think of that” abound!
Signposting is fair, but not in your face and provides a seemingly meta puzzle to utilise on occasion
There is a hint system which is good, by play at home standards, and the couple of times we used them they provided just enough to kick us over the proverbial edge to come to a conclusion on the puzzle.
Overall this is another excellent edition to the Puzzle Post catalogue, with a nifty story, excellent quality material and fun, logical puzzles… you can’t go wrong!
Brit of an Escape Habit 