Room Escape Artist

Not your typical Hallmark 💩

Location:  at home

Date Played: December 25, 2023

Team size: 1+; we recommend 2-3

Duration: the website says about 45 minutes per card, but experienced puzzlers will solve the set of 3 in about 60 minutes

Price: about $35 CAD

REA Reaction

Holiday Puzzle Cards was a smart product for Scarlet Envelope. It fit their brand, and played to their market. The art immediately drew us in. The cards were funny. They had personality.

Overall, the puzzles were strong. In a few places, more clue structure would have been beneficial. Some cards were more clear and more satisfying to solve than others.

Also, the packaging was fantastic. If we had a storefront, we’d put these on display. This was both a quality product and eye-catching.

On the whole, Holiday Puzzle Cards felt like a success. This is the type of thing we’d love to see the Scarlet Envelope do more of. And it’s not too late to send holiday cards – these are still available!

We solved all our cards without writing on them, and we already put them in the mail to the REA writers who wrote the most posts this year. Friends, enjoy!

Who is this for?

• Puzzle lovers
• Holiday-spirited folks
• Any experience level

Why play?

• Puzzley holiday cheer
• Puzzles you can solve AND give to a friend to solve

Story

There’s no story here. This was a pack of 3 different illustrated Christmas cards, each containing multiple puzzles that came together to complete a phrase. Each card was a self-contained solve. The package also contained a postcard with a single self-contained puzzle.

Setup

Open the card; solve the puzzles.

On the accompanying website, in addition to the hints, we could listen to an audio recording of the song on the inside of the card, which was also the main cluing for the card.

Gameplay

Scarlet Envelope’s Holiday Puzzle Cards (Set of 3) was a collection of 3 greeting cards each containing unique puzzles.

It had an easy-to-moderate level of difficulty, which varied from card to card.

Core gameplay revolved around observing, making connections, and solving puzzles.

Analysis

➕ We would 💯 send these to our puzzle-loving friends. We appreciated that each card was a self-contained puzzle (and each included a link to the hint website), so we could mail each one to a different recipient. There was also plenty of room to write a personal holiday message inside.

➕ The illustrated card artwork was adorable. As holiday cards, these looked nice, better than most.

➕ The accompanying website was easy to use. We enjoyed the audio recordings, so that nobody needed to sing (or regretfully, read) out loud. The granular hints were easy to use.

➕ Overall, the puzzles were satisfying to solve. It was always clear what type of solution we were looking for. The cat card had especially well-clued puzzles that solved quickly and enjoyably. The reindeer card had more complex puzzles, that we generally enjoyed the most (with the exception of one under-clued puzzle).

➖ The card with the living room scene was less well clued. We appreciated how it diverted expectations with one puzzle, but this change wasn’t clued, and instead, part of the clue severely misled us. This card also suffered from color-matching inconsistency that made it hard to connect puzzle components confidently. Although the puzzles were fun, and no more difficult than the other cards in the pack, this card was more chaotic to solve than we would have liked.

➕ The packaging was phenomenal. These would look nice as a holiday display on a retailer’s shelf.

Tips For Players

• Space Requirements: a small table
• Required Gear: pencil and paper, internet-connected device for hints

Buy your copy of Scarlet Envelope’s Holiday Puzzle Cards, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Scarlet Envelope provided a sample for review.