With us playing a fair few different types of online escape rooms in the last few years since Lockdown, we got to try out the first challenge set by Eleven Puzzles in March. Unboxing the Mind of a Cryptic Killer follows the story of two detectives which you will assist during your experience. They complete the following story;

“After receiving a suspicious text message, two former partners are sent to different locations. On arrival, they find two chests and realize that the Cryptic Killer is on the hunt again! Knowing they’re in grave danger, they have called on you for your expertise in puzzle solving and code-breaking. Can you help the detectives escape the clutches of the killer?”

Puzzles & Flow: 6/10

The puzzles were a cool feature and how Eleven Puzzles have used team work as the focus to solve all puzzles. As each player can play as a different detective, with two of us playing we had to be a different detective. This shows you different puzzles / parts of the puzzles in each part of the game. Meaning, communication is key as you’ll have to work together in order to get the answers. None of the puzzles repeated however, in each scene it did kind of follow the same style, which was to get a combination code to unlock a padlock. It gets harder the further into the game you get and does through some curveballs for sure. The flow was pretty open as each puzzle could be done whenever, due to the non linear gameplay.

We did find some of the puzzles a little harder than we would of liked but using the help tool, we managed to make sense of the ones we struggled on. This feature allows you a number of hints before giving you the answer if you are really stuck, which can be super handy. 

Uniqueness: 6/10

Eleven Puzzles have really been unique in their stamp of an online game, with the combination of cartoon style artwork, team work puzzles and a detailed yet simple story to follow. We can see a lot of time has gone into this first challenge and how the experiences compliments all of these features they have designed, really shows. 

Overall with a rating of 19, Unboxing the Mind of a Cryptic Killer is a challenge for new and experienced escape room lovers, with quirky graphics and clever team based puzzles!

Eleven Puzzles is worth checking out as they start their journey in the online escape room world. You won’t be disappointed with Unboxing the Mind of a Cryptic Killer. We managed to complete our experience in 1 hour and 54 minutes which, is over the average of 90 minutes. We really had a hard time with the two of us and worked out we were terrible at explaining some puzzles to each other. This was down to the genius designs of the puzzles though. 

They do have a fun hidden message free challenge on the website which you can set up for a love one or a friend, to see what they can offer. Also, we expect to see the launch of their second experience called Parallel Lab to come soon. Thank you to the team for offering us a complimentary code to review and experience and we can’t wait to keep an eye out to see how they progress in the future.