Room Escape Artist

Dark Tours Volume I: Cemeteries is a puzzle book created by Crux Club.

Format

Style of Play:

• Puzzle book

Who is it For?

• Puzzle lovers
• Best for players with at least some experience
• Horror fans
• Macabre history buffs

Required Equipment: Computer with internet connection, pen & paper

Some puzzles are dark and a good overhead light source is a must for easy viewing of the details.

Recommended Team Size: 1-2

Play Time: There is no clock. Expect somewhere between 4-10 hours… admittedly, we didn’t keep track too well.

Price: $13

Booking: purchase and play at your leisure

Description

Dark Tours Volume 1: Cemeteries is a book of puzzles based on 20 actual cemeteries. Black-and-white illustrations depict the gruesome details of each location, with puzzles embedded in the graphics. The bonus Dark Mystery puzzles require research to solve. Hints and solutions are provided at the end of the book for the regular puzzles, and an online answer checker can confirm the solutions for all of the puzzles.

The internet is only required for Dark Mysteries.

Sarah Willson’s Reaction

If the premise of intricately illustrated puzzles based on real-life cemeteries sounds alluring, Dark Tours Volume I is worth checking out. The macabre artwork was a particular highlight: As I read the paragraph describing each puzzle set, I found myself excited to turn the page and see a bizarre tableau of vampires, skeletons, or creepy clowns.

The content is morbid as promised, touching on topics from hellmouths to human sacrifice and amusement park accidents. The book sometimes leans into stereotypical horror themes like voodoo and haunted asylums. On the other hand, the history generally seemed well-researched, and I appreciated that solving the Dark Mysteries requires you to learn something about each burial place.

Overall I enjoyed the puzzles, especially untangling each section’s mysteries from one another. However, the difficulty level was uneven, and a few puzzles didn’t feel intuitive even after reading the solutions. I didn’t mind the bumpiness, but some puzzlers might prefer a smoother experience.

Theresa Piazza’s Reaction

Dark Tours is the latest puzzle book installment from Crux Club, and when comparing it to Mob Treasure (the last one I played), I prefer Dark Tours! It’s interesting to learn about macabre anecdotes about places in the world, (even if I would like the location lore to tie into the puzzles more). At times, the book did get a little bit repetitive, lots of pattern recognition and indexing used within, but if you’re a beginner puzzle solver with a taste for the spooky, this is a perfectly fine start for you to hone your craft. For more experienced solvers looking for a puzzle book, I’d reach for one of Eric Berlin’s books before this one.

Fro’s Reaction

I really liked this format where the creator selected 20 real-world cemeteries with eerie and sometimes unsettling backstories and built standalone puzzle worlds around each one. Detailed, graphic novel-style art in black and white brought the worlds to life and cemented the eerie cemetery vibe. Each puzzle held a lot of input so attention to detail was critical, but puzzle elements were largely well labeled. Some puzzles gave clearer instructions than others on how to get started on the solve, and there were several that I struggled with. For those wanting more of a challenge, each puzzle featured a Dark Mystery that required outside research and for which no hints were offered. I was not able to solve all of these, and I’m looking forward to continuing to try.

A bonus of this book was the exposure to the cemeteries themselves and their varied histories, several of which interested me enough that I did additional reading about them. I would love to see another book in this format about other places of interest in the world.

The Lone Puzzler’s Reaction

This is a puzzle book with 20 separate puzzles. Most are delightfully tricky with very dark and scary art. A few are a bit off, but not enough to stop you wanting to dig into the crazy things going on in each puzzle picture . Each of the twenty is separate so it is a great quick break set of puzzles… although it is hard to put down once you start.

It’s a very entertaining and fast paced puzzle book with detailed stories and art supporting unique puzzles. A definite must have for fans of horror and real world unexplained mysteries.

Disclosure: Crux Club provided the Hivemind reviewers with a complimentary play.

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