Mysterious Packages: Best Escape Room and Mystery Games, Tabletop Bellhop Gaming Podcast Episode 233

Hello, and welcome to the Tabletop Bellhop Gaming Podcast, episode 233, Mysterious Packages, The Best Escape Room and Mystery Games. This episode is sponsored by our friends at Grand Gamers Guild. Thanks, Marc. I am Moe Tousignant, the Tabletop Bellhop, your cardboard concierge helping you make your game nights better. With me tonight is my wife, partner, and less visible, but very important part of the Tabletop Bellhop team, Deanna. Hey, folks. Now, unfortunately, Sean's day job has turned to c

rap lately, and his company has him staying on site, so he's not able to record tonight. So we figured we'd try something new and record an episode with just Deanna and I. Now, we're recording this live on Twitch, as we try to do every Wednesday night at 8 P.M. EST and things may not quite look as polished as usual. It's Sean who usually hosts the streams, and he's way better on the tech side of things than I am, though it's working so far so good. So hopefully you guys will be forgiving. So one

of the reasons I wanted to come on the show tonight is I wanted to talk about one of my favorite styles of games, which is mystery games or escape room style board games. And in general, I enjoy that type of game way more than Moe does, especially when it comes to the mystery solving side of things. So since you're not likely to hear Moe raving about such things, I wanted to share some of my favorite mystery games, and also help out with tonight's featured review, which is going to be Ghost in

the Machine from the Mysterious Package Company. Plus, this way I get to sneak in some of my thoughts during the tabletop segment, and we'll be talking about all the games we've been playing lately, which includes something new that is also from the Mysterious Package Company, and that's the Doomensions. You probably saw Moe's photos. He's been dropping on social lately. It's this giant 3D pop-up paper Dollhouse. It's really nifty. So you can find links to the games we talk about tonight and mor

e through our show notes, which you'll be able to find at TabletopBellhop.com/episode233 That's 2-3-3, the numbers. Now, some of those links may be affiliate links, which cost you nothing to use, but may give us a small kickback. Also, some of the games we mention tonight will be review copies provided by publishers. Okay, we're going to start things off by stopping by the suggestion box. Welcome to the suggestion box, where we share some pertinent feedback we've received on our content lately.

Here's a great comment we got over on BGG in regards to our Herb Witches expansion for the Quacks of Quedlinburg review. Stefan Hickey writes, A thorough and accurate appraisal of the Herb Witches expansion. I totally agree with all these modules. Deserve to be included in the base game. It offers a lot more options that expand on what's already in play. Now over 46,000 ingredient permutations, I read elsewhere. It's worth the price of admission just to get the new set of books, each offering tw

o new ways to play each ingredient, plus the two newly added ingredients. But, as you pointed out, the extra control provided by the Herb Witches is something great that hasn't been commented on enough by others. You add in the overall spill pot and black player components, and this is a must-have expansion by my definition, meaning that I'd never want to play without it if it was available. Well, thank you for that encouraging comment, Stephen or Stefan. I do appreciate the part where they note

d that we called out something that hasn't been mentioned by others, and I'm always encouraged when I hear feedback like that. Because to me, that indicates that our longer format, more detailed reviews are worth doing. That kind of sets us apart from other people. Now, is there anything you wanted to add about Herb Witches for Quacks? Well, I agreed with Stefan because it is a must-have expansion for me. That is the expansion that made Quacks playable for me. Choosing the best moments to use yo

ur coins, just that little bit of added strategy made the game so much more enjoyable to me. It just felt like I had more player agency. Okay, up next we have a comment from Relentless Rolento, who commented on our Endangered unboxing. They say, Love this game. I grabbed the expansion as well, and it almost triples, if not more, the ways to play for the better. Really easy rules and great to play with kids or adults. Well, thanks for that, Relentless. We got a copy of the expansion. It's actuall

y, you might be able to even see it above my shoulder over here. And as well as we actually have the Monarch Butterfly promo as well, and I am looking forward to checking those out. More so now, though, knowing how much it adds to the game. Sean and I actually did some digging on this. We're like, holy cow, there's a lot of stuff out there for this game. Not just from Grand Gamers Guild, but also fan-created stuff, which is awesome to see. Now, one of the reasons I included this comment is we ju

st had this out at our last public play event, and it was a huge hit. I actually can't believe how well it went over. So we are getting very, very close to reviewing Endangered. Could be as quick as next week. Now, Deanna isn't as much a hobby game fan, but I think this one actually tickled the right spot a few places. Yeah, overall, I did enjoy it. It has a cooperative game problem. It's really hard not to quarterback in this one. Maybe it's because I was playing with my own kids. I don't know.

But the theme integration is really well done, and there's a lot to enjoy. Enough to keep me coming back, even though it's cooperative. All right, that's it for the Suggestion Box this week. Let's keep things moving with a couple of announcements. I've got a few things I want to cover this week, starting with an apology. So last week, Sean and I talked about great kids games. Great kids games that are fun for adults. And this is kind of an update to a classic list we published. It was on cooper

ative games, but being more breadth, talking about more different types of games. And one of the other things I wanted to do was update the list. So we were only talking about things that were currently in print that people could actually get. Well, I messed up. And I swear, I checked every game that day before we went live to make sure I could find a copy somewhere. Now, I don't know if I looked and I found a copy of Pitch Car. Pitch Car is the problem. I don't know if I found one copy. You kno

w, I happened to see the last copy available, say, on Amazon or somewhere. I don't remember where I checked. Or I looked it up on Board Game Oracle, and there was somewhere it was available. But it's not. You cannot get Pitch Car anywhere. To the extent I went to Eagle Griffin's website going, well, it's got to be there. Maybe it's between printings. The Pitch Car section on their site's gone. All that is left is the loop-to-loop, which is the final expansion they put out, and a couple little tr

ack expansions. But, like, not even the core box expansion. Just, like, you can get extra pieces of track and some foam rails, and that's all that's left. So it seems Pitch Car is sadly out of print now, which I am sad to see because it is a fantastic game. Hmm. So take this as a heads up. If you happen to find a copy at your FLGS, pick it up now. Because it seems the core game is already going for silly prices online. Yeah, the one copy I did find, I didn't even want to throw a link in the show

notes, too, because it was a little ridiculous. Next up, just another reminder that we will be in Louisville, Kentucky from March 2nd until March 7th for the GAMMA Expo, which we're looking forward to going to and meeting up with publishers and checking out the new hotness and networking with fellow content creators. I'm getting hyped. The GAMMA Expo hype is real here in the Tousignant house. Yeah, I'm getting excited about it. It's really close now. Both Moe and myself will be there. So if you

see us, be sure to come up and say hi. All right. Finally, I've got one for the locals, anyone here in Windsor, Ontario, perhaps even over the border into the Detroit area. I am pleased to announce a brand new monthly game night starting up right here in Windsor in the Walkerville area of town, in the Walkerville Brewery District. I'm working with Walkerville Brewery themselves to bring you Brews and Board Games. A once a month game night on Thursday evenings. And these events are going to run

from 5pm to 9pm with the first one scheduled for March 28th. Now they're going to have food available. Specifically, I know there'll be pizza. I'm not sure exactly what else they're going to have. They will have their full tap list available with their fantastic beers and their fantastic cider, as well as non-alcoholic beverages. Now, I also know that particular night they're going to throw a deal out because they want people to drink and game. Pitchers of Draft will be on sale. I think it's thr

ee bucks off, but I can't confirm that right now. Now, as usual for one of these events, I will personally be bringing a load of games. There are going to be at least three of us there who will be happy to teach you anything we bring. We may not all know all the games, but between all of us, we'll know all of them. And as usual, you are welcome and encouraged to bring your own games out to share them with others. And the brewery is just... it's the perfect space for it. They have big tables, nic

e lighting, and tasty beer. So I'm really excited about the new event. And the first one is on the Thursday at the end of March, which is right before the Easter holiday weekend, right? It's the day before Good Friday. So hopefully a lot of people will be able to come out. At the Tabletop Bellhop, we're here to answer your gaming or game night questions. If you've got a question for us, you can send an email to questions@TabletopBellhop.com. You can head over to the website and click on Ask the

Bellhop and you'll get a form you can fill out. Or you can hit me up on social media, where I can be found everywhere as TabletopBellhop (one word.) Now tonight, the question we're answering is, what are some of the best mystery and escape room style games? And to help me answer that, I brought in an expert. Someone who enjoys these kind of games way more than I do. My wife and partner, Deanna, who does a lot of the behind the scenes work that goes into making the Tabletop Bellhop what it is. H

ey folks. Happy to be here tonight talking about some games that I might like just a wee bit more than Moe does. Now before we get to our game recommendations, I don't want to just jump into a top 10 list or whatever. I want to spend a bit of time clarifying the type of games we're talking about, and then talking about what we think makes a good one. What makes for a good mystery escape room game. Okay, I'm going to let you do the whole definition thing. Go to it. All right. So clarifying the ki

nd of games we're talking about. These are the games that fall under tonight's umbrella. I want to share cooperative puzzle games where the information provided in them. is used to play through and get to some conclusion. Like you win the game, you finish the game by solving the case, or by completing all the puzzles, or by getting the box open, or finally escaping. Now these include a murder mystery games where you're presented with a series of clues, as well as escape room and a box style game

s where you're presented with a mix of puzzles to solve. Okay, and while I enjoy both styles of games, the solve-a-mystery ones are definitely more my thing. Fair enough. Now you're the one that really digs these style of games, as does our youngest daughter and your mother. You are the ones that like the mystery. You want a pile of evidence to sift through and corroborate things and figure out who's lying and not. Whereas our older daughter, Gwen, and I seem to enjoy more of the escape room puz

zle style ones. Especially if they have physical components where you're manipulating things. So it's kind of interesting because the family overall is kind of split between the two of them. But I think there's a lot of things in common by these two types of games, which is why I grouped them together tonight. And there's some overlap as well. Many of the murder mystery games have puzzles in them, and many of the puzzle games still tell a story. So what I'd like to talk about is what we think ma

kes for a good mystery escape room game, and I'll let you go first. Okay, so this is a personal preference thing, but I think if it's a theme or an IP that you're interested in, you're going to enjoy the game more. It's true for most games, right? So for me, I'm probably going to enjoy something that's historical or fantasy-based versus modern. And then when we were doing the Coded Chronicle games, there was the Scooby-Doo one. That was super fun because we could all buy in on it with Scooby-Doo

. When we played The Shining, neither you or I had watched the movie, so it wasn't... It was okay. It was a playable game. Like it wasn't an unplayable experience, but it just wasn't as fun as something where we were bought into the IP. Whereas on my side, I think the most important thing in one of these type of games is there is some theme or story or IP. I don't want just a bunch of random puzzles that are not interconnected, that have nothing to do with the story or the game. And we played a

couple with this. I'm not going to call out the bad ones tonight. We're going to focus on the good ones. But we played a few where it was like the puzzle took you out of the game. It's like, you're following this logical path. Now go do this puzzle. It has nothing to do with it. Okay, now you get a little further. Go do another puzzle. I think it's important to have some form of theme, and it can be even better if it's IP. Yeah, and like you said, I like when it's cohesive and it's all tied toge

ther, not do a puzzle to unlock another three sentences of story to do a puzzle to unlock another two sentences of story. Yes. It's just not as fun or immersive. Now, the next one I would call out is bits. I want cool bits. I want neat things. I want things to manipulate. And I think this applies to both types of games. Like if I'm doing an escape room game, give me tumblers, give me code wheels, give me stuff to play with, give me neat bits, especially when it's something you don't expect. Oh y

eah. Like the Hunt a Killer game, the Agatha Christie one, when it came in, we have the deluxe version, it came in that giant wooden box. And it just like, the game could have sucked at that point, and I was already going to be sucked in. And the game did not suck, but you have a giant box, it's wooden, it has a locked drawer that's actually locked. It's got all these neat components, you don't know how they got, like that just sucks you right in, right at the beginning, right? So stuff like tha

t. Even the one we're reviewing tonight, like it wasn't quite as over the top, but it's still like, just the way it was presented, when you open the box, there's a file case in there, everything's in the file case. So it's just draws you into the game. I totally agree, which actually kind of gets my next point, is I want the game to be immersive. I want it to feel, especially this, this is more so on the crime scene style ones, is I want to feel like I'm investigating a crime. I want to feel lik

e I'm looking at actual bits of evidence. But like that box, I'll call it out right now. We have an unboxing video, you can go look at it. It's Agatha Christie's Murder at the, sorry, Mystery at the Hunter's Lodge. It's either Mystery or Murder at the Hunter's Lodge, my bad. Something at the Hunter's Lodge. Mystery. Mystery at the Hunter's Lodge, thank you. Agatha Christie's Mystery at the Hunter's Lodge, Deluxe Edition. Just watch that unboxing video. You can't help, there's a pennant, there's

a drinking flask. And the drinking flask, when you pull it out, you find a note that was tucked inside the leather case. Like, it feels like you're actually involved. Another example of that, I think, is the Body of Evidence series that's new from Mysterious Package Company, where you're not only detective, you're also coroner, and you get a paper cadaver to actually perform an autopsy on. Yeah, that one was kind of neat. This is just me, but I'm really picky about paper quality. So if you're te

lling me that I'm doing something that's from the turn of the century, but you put it on, like, super glossy poster stock, that's going to pull me right out of the game. There was a couple games we played that were, um, you know what? It's just better that I can't remember because I'm not saying anything negative about anyone, but there was a couple we played that were set in the turn of the century or 1920s or whatever, but the paper and the printing was just, you know, and also it all looked t

he same. If it was a newspaper clipping or a postcard or whatever, it was all printed on the same paper. No, that's not cool. Yeah, like the good ones. take that into thought and have good paper quality. Yeah, my escape room mystery game shouldn't look like it's a print and play from my own, you know, HP printer. It shouldn't look like I printed it out in my computer. Um, so good proofreading. That's a big one. If there are errors in the text, like, uh, we ran into one and we were, we were using

, uh, we were playing a preview, like for the actual, yeah, prototype, right? So we were playing a prototype, so I'll give them some leeway there, but there was an error in the text and it became a red herring and sent my mom and I off on like a 45 minute quest to try and figure out something that had nothing to do with the game. So, you know, you need everything to make sense and to match within the game. And if something doesn't make sense, it had better be part of the puzzle. Yeah, this is a

hard one. We've had some very negative experiences with these style of games due to mistakes. Um, not even necessarily just as like typos, but like puzzles that don't actually work or things that don't line up or they send you to passages in a book and it ends up one of the passages was duplicated. I remember trying to solve one game and having to flip through the book and read every passage to find the one that logically made sense to be next. Yes, I had forgotten about that. That was awful. So

, and it needs to be somewhat historically accurate. Like, I don't need a PhD level of history lesson here, but I don't want glaring discrepancies, right? Yeah. Something that's just going to pull you right out of the game, make you go, what the heck? No, I agree. And I'm going to bring up one of our later points now because it fits in here is anachronism. If the game is all about going through mafia notes being passed to each other and set in the 1920s, don't have me Google something. Don't hav

e me have to look something on the Internet. Even having to play an audio clip just brings you out of that immersion. Don't throw in anachronism where possible. Like, I get it. Some games are app based and I understand it. We're going to talk about some later tonight that are set in medieval times that use apps, but do a good job of it. But like, make sure it just, it fits. Exactly, yeah. I find that one to be, that can really ruin a game for me. Yeah, it just brings you out of it, right? Like,

you no longer feel like you're investigating this. You now feel like you're playing a game. And again, immersion is a huge part of these games to me. And I'm getting distracted by my Facebook messages that are popping up, right? Is that what I want to do? So something else I'm looking for is accurate age guidelines. And if it's going to be gruesome, tell me about it up front. Like, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I want to know the tone of the game going into it. I don't want to be surpr

ised by it. Totally agree. Let you know, like, I know, give us a rating, give us, tell us the contents. It's like we talk about with role-playing games and safety tools and session zero, like all that information for these style of games needs to be on the box or easy to find somehow, especially on the box. But if you're ordering the game online, it should be available on your website. Describe what's in here. Content warnings are important. And we're talking about this from experience. So that'

s why we wanted to call this one out. One of the things I look for is a compelling story, interesting plot. We mentioned this a bit above, but we don't want just a bunch of unconnected puzzles. The puzzles need to be tied to the theme. And I'm going to pull out a negative of a game we overall have good thoughts on. When I mentioned the Coroner game, well, the Coroner game kind of pulls you out of it when you find like a silly match the lines puzzle is the end result once you're in the body. And

I'm like, well, what the heck? You're making me be a coroner, but now I'm playing Connect the Dots. They give you a full on cadaver. And I mean, on the one hand, it wasn't gruesome. Yeah. It was totally family friendly, but you open it up and you have like polka dot puzzles inside. Yeah. Abstract puzzles inside this cadaver. And I was like, that's a little jarring. And we've definitely... It's still a good game, but that part of it broke continuity. Yes. And we played like... Here's a good examp

le is the exit series of games go kind of both ways. Some have this like great overarching plot and everything. And then others are literally just turn the page, solve the next puzzle. And it's such... I much prefer the ones where I feel I'm solving the puzzles for a reason. Yes. And I mean, there's also varying levels of... How do I say this? Like some of these are really well-written. The one that I Mark out as my favourite is exceptionally well-written. Like I was just blown away by how solid

the writing is in it. So that's definitely a plus. Now a draw for us specifically, because we do not do these as solo experience. We always... It's always at least two of us. Usually it's all four of us. And sometimes we bring in Dee's mom, Brenda, as well, because she loves these style of games. And we're playing with five of us. And sometimes Sean's there and we'll play with six. Is what I love to see in these games is a way to split the puzzles up and have people work on different parts simu

ltaneously. And that really varies in these games. Some very much feel designed to work with only one person. But I much prefer it. Give multiple people different things to do. Whether that you give us multiple puzzles at once, or there's just enough different clues that everyone can be doing different parts of it. Someone can grab all the police reports, while someone else looks at the witness reports. Whatever that happens to be. Please give us some way for at least two people, like at least t

wo things you can split up, if not more. And I remember a positive example of that is when we did the Holiday Hijinx, the Valentine's Day one. Right away, it unlocked two branching paths right off the go. So we each had our own thing to do. And that was kind of cool, right? And then we could switch off when we got stuck. Though as Sean pointed out for that one, and I kind of agree with him, if you're going for a Valentine's date theme, it might've been more thematic to have us work on the same p

uzzles together. But I did appreciate that. That's true. Let's all work together, apart. Yes, exactly. Length of play is important. Some are very short, some are very long. And in a shocking way, for one of the things, this should be very clearly stated at the beginning, just like content, the length of the game should be very clear. Some companies are great. They say like exit games are about an hour. Holiday Hijinx games are about an hour, except one that very clearly stated it's two hours and

can be split over. We had no clue how long the Ghost in the Machine was going to be until we were partway through, and I was like, holy cow, we're still in book one. But people say we had a preview copy, and it does have the info on their website now. Now, yes. I don't know if it was there before and we missed it, or we just didn't do our due diligence. I think mainly at that point, we had probably played 10 different mixes of murder and escape room games, and we just expect them to be an hour

or two, right? Like that's just kind of the standard length. Not this one. This is like eight to 10 hours, right? Hunt a Killer was on the long side too, that Agatha Christie one. You know what? Since they're one-and-dones, you can only play these games once, and then ideally you can repackage them and give them to someone else. I like when they're on the longer side. I feel like I'm getting, you know, it's worth the price of admission. No, I agree. The length of play is nice. Just make it clear

so we know when we're going in. I think that's the big thing. Now I'm going to call out something is the re playability. A huge bonus for any of these games is a way to reset it. A way that someone else can play. Most of these games are one-and-done. I would say probably all of them are one-and-done for a specific group. As in, you're never going to be able to play them again because you'll know the puzzles, you'll know the mystery, you'll know whodunit. But most of them also get destroyed whil

e you're playing. They expect you to write on things and fold things and cut things. Which is awesome because that really enhances the immersion. It's the same thing I found. I love legacy games. Risk Legacy taught me that cutting up a card is awesome because what I've done in the game is now permanent. I made a permanent change. My decisions matter. I can't just restart and play again tomorrow and it'll be different now. And that's what I love about these games. But even better though is when t

hey include a way to reset. And we're starting to see more of that and it is greatly appreciated. I remember the first exit game we played. We tried so hard to not ruin anything. It ruined the experience. It made it less fun because we were just going out of our way to try not to cut or bend or write on anything. And the one that really impressed me was when we opened the Doom Mansions the other day. It had a replay pack inside it. Not only that, there's a little skull symbol that's on anything

in the game that you are going to destroy while playing that will be replaced in that pack. And then, you know, you're not wondering, is this okay to destroy? Should I be bending this or cutting this up? You know you can do it and you can still use the recharge pack to reset it to give it away to someone else. So I thought that was super cool. Now, they did only include one recharge pack. So you're still going to get two uses out of the game, but that's still better than nothing. I wonder if you

could buy another one. That would be... That's possible. There's something to look up. I have no idea, but that would be cool. Going back to length of play, if you were going to give me more than an hour, anything more than an hour, give me some way to save the game. Give me a logical break, some way to stop and come back to it later. In my opinion, that points an hour. I think some people might even say half an hour. I need to be able to pause my game and come back to it. Just we're adults. Th

ings come up. We have kids, the phone rings, whatever. Give me a way to pause and give me a way to come back, especially with the longer one. Yeah, half an hour would be excessive, but an hour, two hours, give me a save point if the game's not going to be wrapping up at that point. Yeah. And then you have the choice. You can go longer if you want to, but also it gives you an idea of how much more you're getting into, too. If you're sitting there trying to judge, well, let's say the clock, do we

want to keep going or if there's logical breaks, right? Now, a huge one for me, and most games are pretty good at this, is a clue system, but more specifically an incremental clue system where you get multiple levels of hints where the first hint is... All it's going to tell you is, do you have the stuff in front of you? Are you looking at the right cards? Have you opened Evidence Pack 6? Are you looking at the map? Have you already been to the barn? Whatever. Whatever that first hint may be, wh

ere it doesn't spoil anything. It's just making sure you're looking at the right stuff. Because often that's enough. And many of the games we played were like, oh, this, okay, wait, I thought that thing we touched half an hour ago we were done with and we put it back in the box. We still need that. That's why we're stuck. Many times that's happened. And then it's just increments, right? Like now that you have the things, here's what they combine with. Okay, now that you know what they combine wi

th, here's the kind of thing you want to look at it. Okay, now that you know it's a word puzzle, it's a five-letter word, whatever. And then give me multiple steps before you give me the final answer. And then when you give me the final answer, explain why. Because we had a problem with that in one of the first ones of these we played, where there was part of the thing we would have never got, and nowhere in the game did it explain where that answer came from. And it drove us bonkers. Give me bo

th. If I remember correctly, we looked it up online and we eventually figured it out. Yes, I had to watch someone else play through who figured it out to figure out how they were supposed to figure it out. And wasn't there some kind of typo involved anyways? So we really would have never gotten it? Yeah, in that particular one, yes, there was an errata. There were two printings and it changed between the German printing and the English printing. Not to try to hint too much at what company that m

ight be. You know what, like half the time I'm like, oh, I don't even want to see clues or hints. It just tempts me. I don't even want to know they exist. But then when you get stuck to the point that like everyone at the table is starting to get titchy and argue with each other, it is nice to be able to have something to pull up and look at. No, and I agree. And we've said this on every review we've ever done on any of these games, although I don't think it's in tonight's review. Use hints. Don

't get to the point you're frustrated. You can, you can... I came through the... What's the term before frustrated? You know, you can be engaged, you can be working on it and... You don't want to be challenged. Challenged, yes. Yes. Challenged, good. Frustrated, bad. It comes more into play in the escape room style than the mystery games. Unless something's gone really off. Yeah. You should probably be on the right track with the mystery solving ones that you don't need. But with the ones that i

t's just a series of puzzles, sometimes getting stuck in that one puzzle, it's no fun. Yep. Another big one, unfortunately, is quality control. Speaking of no fun. Customer support, because another thing we call out on every one of these reviews now is most of these games come with a checklist to verify what's in the box. Use it. Please go through there. You don't want to be playing a game for three hours to get completely stumped, only to find out you're missing something. Like it literally was

not in the box. Unfortunately, we've seen this happen. Then it comes to customer support. We could have just gone through the checklist and we didn't bother. We skipped that step. And then three hours in, we were quite frustrated. And that was one of those. So again, I don't, I'm not as big a fan of the crime games. I'm usually the one that's like, I'll grab my phone and Google something. And then I'll just kind of sit back and play GM and give hints. Because I'm not the one that's enjoying the

game as much as everyone else anyway. And that was one I'm like, okay, wait, the clue is here. And everyone's like, well, I can't find that. And oh, it was a mess. It was a mess. Also, this is true of most board games these days. Check for an FAQ. I hate that you have to do it, but check for an FAQ probably before you start playing. Yep. Check for an FAQ and an errata. So. So I think those are the main points. Negative. And then we got bonus points, bonus extra positive points. If you have a go

od plot twist. There's a couple lately that we've played that had like a really solid plot twist near the end that I enjoyed. And the other thing that you get bonus points for is if you get some kind of artifact to keep at the end. Yeah. Like, you know, something solid, metal, wood, some doohickey that you can keep. And, you know, if there's something for different people at the table to take home, that's always fun. That is cool. Honestly, it doesn't have to be that big a deal. We have played g

ames. No, even like those little, those little plastic skulls in that one exit game. Yes, exactly. That was a neat thing. There was three of them and I, you know, each of the kids got to take one and it was like, yeah, you have a little something to remember doing that event. You remember doing that part, yeah. Heck, one exit game, when we finished it, gave us a recipe. Even that's just cool. Yes, that's great, yeah. Like, that's just neat. Yep. Yeah. Give me something, give me an artifact at th

e end. That's actually one of the things I like about these kinds of games. Now, some of the games are basically artifacts at the end. Like, Doomensions itself is an artifact. You have a pop-up Dollhouse at the end of it. But it's always nice to get something else. And there's, depending on the games, some companies are great at this and some give you nothing at the end. You're just like, oh, I'm done. Yeah, I got a score. Okay. Bunch of stuff to recycle. Yeah, really. Yeah. All right. Now that

we've shared some of our thoughts on what makes for a good escape room or mystery game, let's get on to a list of some of the best games we've played in this genre of games. Okay. Doomensions. I'm gonna start with Doomensions. We're just starting to explore this one. But oh, wow. Is it ever impressive? Okay, so it's a giant pop-up paper Dollhouse. And I know Moe's been sharing a lot of photos of it online lately. It's like a two-story massive pop-up. When you open it up, all the furniture inside

the Dollhouse pops up. There's little books you can open and coverage you can open all inside this thing. And I was like, wow, that right there, I'm sold. That looks so cool and all the pictures of it online. But then when we did the unboxing, you find out it also comes with this really elaborate scrapbook journal. Yeah. And it's, wow, we started playing it last week and I was just so impressed with it. And it is broken into five chapters with easy spots to stop at. And it is very much, it's no

t a murder mystery. It's an escape room in a box, an escape room in a Dollhouse, really. So it's a string of puzzles. But the plot around it isn't bad. It's cohesive. I was really enjoying it. And yeah. And that scrapbook was surprisingly cool. It had lots of cool little bits in it. You get a giant Dollhouse. You get a magnifying glass, like a big wooden magnifying glass. And they give you a little flashlight to poke around and look in the Dollhouse with. So it was just, it was super well done.

Yeah. It's extremely neat. And I would say it's kind of a mash-up of the murder mystery with the escape room. But so far the puzzles are very escape room feeling. But like the story leading up to it, because you've got five chapters and each of the chapters is a different investigator that was there before you who failed. So you actually get like their notes and stuff. So it's kind of cool. It's got a lot more story than some of the escape room games we've played. So I do dig that. One of the th

ings to watch for though, is this is a long one. Because those five chapters, they say each one's one to two hours. And the one we played took us about an hour and a half. But that was including like learning the game, right? Like reading through, there's a thick instruction book, kind of walking it through all of it and so on. And there is a lot of playtime in this box. You're looking at like 10 hours worth of playtime, which is quite impressive. The only thing, I'm going to call them out right

here on this, is it's really silly to start an instruction book by saying, no app, no online. You don't need the Internet. You're going to play this at a table together and then have a QR code that reads you off the story. Yes. Like what? This game is going to be totally analog. Put your phones away. Okay. Now scan this QR code. I'm like, did that just happen? That was like, there, you need an editor there. You got some conflicting information. It was in the wrong order, guys. All right. So my

first game on this list is Scooby-Doo! Escape from the Haunted Mansion, a Coded Chronicles game from Jay and Sen, some fantastic Canadian game designers published by The Op. We love the Coded Chronicles series. The Coded Chronicles series is just so well done and so neat. And honestly, this is the best of that series. One of the best family game nights we've ever had with Deanna, myself, and our two kids was playing Scooby-Doo! Escape from the Haunted Mansion. It was just that engaging. Now the

system's fascinating where you have different characters that have numbers on them, and then you have map tiles with other numbers and you match the character to the map tile to look up a section in a book. And each character does something different. Like Shaggy tries to eat it. Scooby tries to sniff it. I don't even remember. Velma tried to work with it, I think, use it. And every character had a different skill to use. Such a fantastic system. They did a really good job capturing that kind of

point-and-click adventure feel in board game form. And I gotta say, the kids just devoured doing silly things, having Shaggy try to eat and lick everything. Yeah, it blew me away how much it captured that point-and-click in a board game. And I was so enamored with the mechanics when we first got into it. I was so excited at the entire concept of the Coded Chronicle games. And then it was just so much fun. It was definitely one of the best game nights we've ever had as a family. The kids were ju

st giggling. And we also solved a mystery, but they were going around and having characters do silly things and interact in silly ways. And the theming was on point. It was very Scooby-Doo. And our kids aren't big Scooby fans, so even with them not really knowing the IP, they still had an awesome time with it. And that game is a 10 out of 10. It's just super fun. The next one on our list, number three, is Hidden Games Crime Scene, case number one, the Maplebrook case. So that's the Canadian vers

ion. And I think it's neat that they localized it. It's still the same game, but it's not called the Maplebrook case in the States. And I don't remember what it is called. But they localized it, so I thought that was cool. And for a modern setting, I actually really enjoyed this one. You do need Internet access, and there were parts where you even listened to audio recordings, but it didn't take you out of the story. It felt appropriate because you were doing a police procedural, right? So it wa

sn't as weird as if I'm doing something turn of the century and they're telling me to pull up a sound file. And I just loved the sheer number of paper clippings and case files and photos and how it was all there to look through. And we took over my mom's entire dining room table. It looked like we were having some kind of just crazy escapade. And it was easy to split up because there was so much to look at. And it was super fun. So the U.S. version is called the New Haven case. And what they cal

l this is a realistic crime scene game. And I got to agree, it's you get a Manila envelope and you crack it open and it's basically we're stumped. Here you go, detective. See what you can figure out. And I thought that was extremely well done. What I was really impressed by was how much stuff you got, how organized that stuff was and just the quality. Here was one where the papers were all different. The newspaper was on newsprint and the postcards were postcards and there were Polaroids. And it

was like a Polaroid. It obviously wasn't a real Polaroid, but it was really close. Like it felt like a Polaroid. And what I really loved about this one is they gave you one tool. Because a big part about this game was looking at witness statements and the timing things happened. And they actually gave you a day planner, like a calendar that they fully expect you to write on. And that's where you make your notes on. And that just worked really well to tie everything together. I thought that was

a fantastic prop and tool to include in the game. Yeah. So everyone at the table could make their own notes and then we were just pulling it all together on this calendar. It was really cool. And I think off the top of my head that the MSRP was really reasonable on those two. So for like a cheaper game, I was just super impressed with them. It looks like $25 US. See, I thought it was $19.95. But you know what? I might be thinking of five years ago, too. That too! We played that one a while ago.

Yeah, we did play that one a while ago. All right. My next one is another Coded Chronicles game. Because as I said, I loved the series. And that is The Goonies Escape with One-Eyed Willy's Rich Stuff. I thought Scooby-Doo was better. I got to say, we don't always present these lists in order. But I will say Scooby's better. But I really enjoyed The Goonies. Now, when we did sit down to play this, we did the good parent thing and sat down and watched The Goonies with the kids. So they at least kn

ew what was going on. But I don't think they had the attachment to The Goonies. Like it just wasn't that big a deal. And I got to say, growing up, living in Windsor, and the threat being that the kids are going to move to Detroit just had a personal impact, I think, on people in this area that may not have other people watching The Goonies around the world. So this was one of my favorite movies. And I got to play it in board game form. And that is where they nailed it. This is where Sen and Chri

s just blew it away. Is they worked with some of the original people. And I don't remember what film company produces The Goonies, but they made it part of the movie. It's basically, it could be cut scenes that didn't make it in the film and you played through them. I loved the way that this let me experience The Goonies, a movie I grew up loving in a new way and made me feel like I was part of that plot. That was awesome. And it just felt like it was adding to the story. And it was really well

done. The writing was great. And it just felt like it was very on point, very on theme. And I love the Coded Chronicles system mechanically. So I was super excited to have another game to play in the series. But I really preferred the Scooby-Doo one a lot. I liked the way that the stuff was broken up into the envelopes for The Goonies. I just, there were parts that felt fiddly to me. I didn't like the way the map laid out and it progressed in weird ways and it took up a lot of table space. And I

remember because we didn't know, for example, that it was going to just suddenly keep building off to the left and then we have to slide it around the table and then it would build off the other side. We have to slide around the table again. So I don't know, it's just fiddly and I didn't like it as much as Scooby. Yeah. I remember one puzzle with a bridge and a rope that was not well-designed or we just didn't get it. Other than that, like you said, I enjoyed that one. I just think you liked it

better than I did. It wasn't bad by a long shot, but not as solid as Scooby. So we're on to number five, and that's Body of Evidence, Best Served Cold, which is also from the Mysterious Package Company. And this game is pretty darn unique. You actually get a giant paper cadaver that you just fold out. When you open it, first thing you see is a toe tag. And somehow this is not at all gruesome, despite the fact that there is a almost life-size cadaver. You do actually dissect by opening it in a s

pecial way, and you play the coroner as well as the detective in the game. But like we talked about this earlier, there was a bit of disconnect between the coroner's examination and the abstract puzzles that ensued. And at the time, that was a surprise that disappointed me. Now, knowing that that's what to expect, I would totally play through another one of these. I think they said it's going to be a series. So if they were to come out with another one, I would know what to expect. I'd probably

enjoy it more. And this was modern, which is another negative for me. But the storyline was well done. It had really well-developed characters. And it felt like you were solving a mystery. Yeah, this one was super neat. And I'll say right here, they have two more coming. So the next two Body of Evidence games are being crowdfunded. I know you can follow the project right now on Kickstarter. I don't know. It might be live by the time you listen to this. So there are two more coming. What we playe

d was a prototype. So we didn't get to see the final version of things. And I didn't know what to think with this. I was on the same place as our kids who were like, do I really want to dissect a cadaver? I don't know. I don't think I do. And then I'm like, I don't know. Is it going to be gruesome? Is it not? But once we got into it, it was pretty cool. Like, this was one that I didn't plan on playing. I was going to sit and take some pictures and let Deanna and her mom play. And I ended up gett

ing as involved as they did. And I ended up helping take part. And I basically, I played the whole thing with them. And I didn't intend to originally. And I think what I liked there is it did the whole crime scene thing, right? Like talking to witnesses and checking coroner's reports and checking police reports and figuring out the times of things, but also included the puzzles. So for me, it was like the perfect mash-up of the escape room with the mystery. So that was one aspect of Body of Evid

ence I really enjoyed. Yes. And I felt like I could be like, here, you work on the puzzle. I'll work on the mystery. Yeah. Well, it was kind of you and your mom were busy doing something with police reports while I was cutting into someone's head. Next up, I have another mash-up that's similar to this, that's on this list for the exact same reason as what I just said. It's La Famiglia from Puzzling Pursuits. This was just, I don't know, it just wasn't what I expected because the Puzzling Pursuit

s, the name of the company is Puzzling Pursuits. So this is a case of mixed expectations. I was expecting crime scene. I was expecting piles of evidence. Again, everything you do in a murder mystery, right? And that's not what this was. This was puzzles. I expected clues and got puzzles. So far, both the games we tried from Puzzling Pursuits had this, but La Famiglia wins by far because the puzzles fit the story. The story was about the mafia and it was about them passing ciphers to each other t

o get hidden information around town without notifying the police. And while you had to decipher the ciphers, the puzzles were the story and it felt like you were deciphering mafia ciphers. And that was fascinating. I really enjoyed La Famiglia. And what's funny is I enjoyed the first game we played from them, Blackbrim, quite a bit for that escape room puzzle experience. But this was just better. It had the story that went behind it. I think it's good we played them in that order because, yeah,

we played Black Brim and I was like, yeah, that was pretty good. I liked that. And then we did La Famiglia later and I was like, oh no, this one's way better. Of the two, I much preferred that one. The historic tie-ins were solid and the puzzles felt like they were part of the story, not breaks from the story and then move on, right? And it was a while back now when we played this, so I can't remember the exact details, but I remember our eldest daughter, there was something in high school hist

ory class that she was currently taking that actually was mentioned in the newspaper clippings for the game. So I remember that was kind of fun when we were playing it that night. So on to number seven, Hunt a Killer, Mystery at Hunter's Lodge. Okay, we were talking about this a little earlier. I was so excited about diving into this game because it's the one that comes in the big wooden box, which is like a giant jewelry box. It has a locked bottom drawer. You flip it open, there's like a signe

t ring in there and all kinds of papers and booklets and one of the small silly details that excited me was the paper quality. All the clippings and the papers were the right type of paper. They didn't feel like weird, suspicious, modern, you know? And then this is the deluxe version we're talking about. There's also a regular version, which actually has some neat artifacts, but it's not quite as over the top. So this game was so immersive and it had a great storyline, which is based on the shor

t story by Agatha Christie, but it doesn't have the same answer as the short story did. So you're not spoiled by reading the one or the other. But to give you an idea of how immersive this is, we gave it to my mom as a Christmas gift and we were just going to open it up and take a quick peek at it. We weren't going to play it. And the next thing you know, we're taking notes, we're yelling out ideas and clues. We're like, did you see this thing? Look at this. And it's like three hours later and w

e're setting it aside to continue with another day. Yeah, and the amusing one about that was my mom was present because it was Christmas while it was Boxing Day. We were probably over at your mom's or possibly on Christmas Day. I don't remember which, but we were there. My mom was there, too. And my mom's, despite the fact she goes to Euchre every Wednesday night, claims she's not a game player. Well, she's sitting in the chair kind of in the corner and she keeps helping out. She keeps yelling o

ut clues. Don't forget about, I don't remember what, don't forget about the wife or check the fireplace or, oh, wait, did the clue mean this? This was awesome. Like, so fantastic looking, so over the top. I have never experienced a game product that was as impressive as this. We talked earlier about how we want games that leave you with artifacts. Well, the whole thing is an artifact. There's nothing in there that's not worth keeping in the end. Like from watches to flasks to the wooden box itse

lf. There's a pennant that I want to hang up in our game room when we finally finish it. Now, we will call out that this one was the game that we had a problem with because this was completely marred by our copy of the game being incomplete. We were missing an entire booklet from our copy of this game, which actually made the case unsolvable. So we will finish it at some point. We were provided PDF copies of the booklet, which talk about being pulled out of your immersion. We do have those. And

at some point we do plan on finishing this one, but we're going to have to get through Dimensions at least first. Next up, I have Exit the Secret Lab, in general, the whole Exit series. But I wanted to call out specific games tonight, not just a whole genre of games. And Exit was actually our first Exit game. But looking back on it, it's actually one of my favorites. So one of the problems I had when we first played the Secret Lab is we had never played an Exit game before. And the Exit games ha

ve a very distinct system. They all work the same. The mechanics are the same. You are looking for three things that you're going to put on a code wheel to get an answer. And that has you look at cards, and the way the cards look at tell you if you're on the right track or not, right? That whole aspect of it was rough. It was a rough learning curve in Exit. But once we got past that, the actual stuff you had to do was fascinating. In this game, you're cutting things. You're assembling things. Pr

etty much every piece of the game, including the box itself, can be part of the puzzle with the Exit series. And the Secret Lab, where it ended up shining, is we went on to play some other ones that were lower difficulty, and they would seem too easy. I just wish the Secret Lab wasn't our first. I wish we had started with one easier just to get that system down, to get how Exit games work. The Unlock series does a great job of this. They include this little small 10-card deck that kind of lets y

ou learn the game before you play your first game. I needed that for Exit. So while the Secret Lab is my favourite of all the ones we played, I recommend the Haunted Roller coaster as your first one. Because it's fun, it's got a silly, spooky Halloween theme, but it's more linear and does a great job of introducing the Exit series and how it works. Yeah, and I remember the kids really enjoyed when we did the Haunted Roller coaster one. My personal favourite is the Catacombs of Horror. Um, I like

that it's set in the Catacombs under Paris. It's double-length, it's actually a two-part. Or you can play it in one night if you're ambitious. It had some really neat components. These little plastic skulls, and there was an actual candle, and there's just some really neat stuff going on in this one. And I liked that it was a little longer and more meaty, because sometimes the Exit games feel, you know, if we finish them in 50 minutes, I'm like, okay, now what? You know, it just doesn't feel li

ke quite enough for me. Yeah, I agree. So number nine on the list is Chronicles of Crime 1400. Now, you're solving mysteries, which I like. You need an app to play. And you travel to different places, and you interact with and question the suspects via the app. And there's a VR component, and I have to say, when I first heard about that, all of that sounded awful. Like, it just sounded gimmicky, and it's in the 1400s, but you're using an app and VR, and that sounds jarring, you know? But then we

played it, and I loved it. It was one of my favorite games. I super enjoyed it, because the app is not... It's definitely a very integral part of the game. There's no other way that they could have technically done that game, because time passes as you're playing the game. And what order you go... And I don't mean... It's not like counting your every second, but what order you talk to folks in matters. It takes time to travel from one spot to another on the map that you're on. It's very intrica

te and very neat. And I really enjoyed the time period and the setting. And yeah, it was just super cool. I want to get back to the table, but Mo didn't really care for it. Yeah, and honestly, I don't even know what it was I didn't like about the system. It's very well done. I had more of a problem with the immersion system. Like the whole scanning QR codes, because it's all QR code based. So if you're talking to a person and you want to ask them about an item in your inventory, you scan the ite

m card. And then if you want to move to a different spot, you scan it. I don't know. Then there's the whole thing where you have VR glasses, where you literally hold your phone up and look around. And you do that. And I'm like, it's neat. I'm looking around a crime scene. But like while you're doing that, you're just shouting out what you see to the other players. And they're shuffling through an item deck as quick as they can, trying to pull out the ones you said. Like to me, like it's neat. It

's very cool. It's well done. Maybe if it was modern, like the original Chronicles of Crime is a modern. crime series. Maybe it wouldn't have bothered me as much. But something about playing a medieval period where you're like a psychic with a dog, having to do all this just took me right out of it. And that is a thing like the VR part was the only part that made it not ideal for playing with multiple people. Right. Because I don't want to be the only one at the table because I want other insigh

t and other brains at the table. But once you're looking around and trying to spot things through VR, like only one of you can do that at a time. And with the kids, the kids are like, I want to do it. No, no, no. I don't know. It was interesting. We really should go back to it. I should give it another shot. Like some of the stuff is so fantastic. What I liked in this game is you could ask the wrong question, which is something you don't get from the, we just have piles of paper evidence to read

. Like you're interviewing people, but you're just reading things. This let you, like we did, we messed up one case because we asked someone in the story the wrong question and they got mad and that shut down a whole section of the game. And there was no way we were going to solve the case after that. So, which was impressive, but then it also had the which-way book problem of, well, now we can't win. Do we replay? Do we restart from the beginning? I don't know. See, that didn't bother me. That

was just like, yeah, it's like the which-way book. You just reset and do it. And now I'm going to make different choices. Yeah, but this is an hour and a half, two hours in and reset and redo it. You can't just hit back. My next one is the Groundhog Gambit. Again, like the Exit games, I didn't want to put the entire Holiday Hijinx series on here. I want to call it the best of the best. Now, this one is from our sponsor, Grand Gamers Guild, but honestly, we hadn't played all these games before th

ey were our sponsor. So take that with a grain of salt. These are fantastic 18-card escape room and a box games by Jonathan Chaffer, who I am. baffled by how he keeps coming up with new ways to use only 18 cards. Now, I'm calling out the Groundhog Gambit because it was the smartest and neatest of the bunch at using only 18 cards. The Groundhog Gambit, as we said in our review, check that out when you have time, is, of course, based on the movie and not as much the holiday. And the way the same 1

8 cards were used over and over again, giving you a different story each time was just fantastic. Yeah, no, it was brilliant. Overall, I really dig the Holiday Hijinx games and how they managed to fit like an entire escape room in a box style game into 18 cards. And you get an hour of play out of this little thing like this, right? And Groundhog Gambit, definitely my favorite of the bunch. And again, I liked it because it was longer. It had a two-hour playtime versus the one hour for the rest of

the games in the series that we tried. And the way the cards were used and then reused and then reused, it was brilliant. OK, normally these lists aren't in any particular order, but I did save the best for last. The Ghost in the Machine from Mysterious Package Company is my favorite of the bunch. I haven't finished Doomensions yet. I may change my mind, but it's unlikely because that's more escape room and this is more murder mystery. The storyline's great. It's just the writing's fantastic. I

t's a super engaging experience. And while it isn't quite as over the top as that giant wooden box from Hunter Killer, it's got really cool table presence. When you first get it, you open the box and inside there's this, it's plastic-y when you touch it, but it looks like a leather file folder. And you open that and the whole game's in there and it's got all these neat physical bits and it's immersive. I was really impressed with the way the game mechanics worked, which was a combination of a wi

tch way book system with some sleuthing and puzzle solving. And yeah, it's just one of the most fun things I've done. Oh, and it's super long, super long. We played it for like four nights, I think. So we got a lot of enjoyment out of it. All right. We are going to be reviewing this one in detail later. The Ghost in the Machine from Mysterious Package Company. So I'm going to save my thoughts for our review. Now, what I do want to do before we go and move on to the next section is call out two h

onorable mentions. Now, the first one I'm going to call out, because I don't know where else I would talk about these, is EscapeWelt's line of what they call escape room boxes. These are escape the room in your home or something is their marketing. Their English is not their first language. Their marketing is somewhat questionable at times. They're English. But these are high-end wooden puzzle boxes featuring multi-step puzzles of various difficulty. They get them open. They look fantastic. And

I've got to say they make some of the coolest gift boxes you can ever give someone else. Now, while each box has a pretty ridiculous story attached to it, I would kind of throw that out the window and ignore the fact that you're supposedly getting the feel of exploring an ancient pyramid. No, no, it's just a wooden box you have to solve. These are honestly almost more desktop toys than games, which is why I did not put them on the main list. Yeah, they're beautiful. And I think they're neat. Par

ticularly if you pop them open and put something inside and use it as a gift box. But if you think you're going to have a group of people sit around a table and work on one of these boxes together, that is not happening. This is really more of a solo experience. I know with our first one, we did try that. We're like, we'll all work on it together. We're like, no, we'll just pass it around and get frustrated. Yes. I don't know about solo experience because I don't think any of us on our own has g

otten a box open. It's always been, you fiddle with it for a bit, then someone else fiddles with it for a bit, maybe finds it out, figures out the next part, then someone else fiddles with it. But yeah, it's not something you can all do together. Finally, I have Fighting Fantasy Adventures from Martin Wallace, based on the classic game books. Now, we've only played a prototype. This did fund on GameFound, but it hasn't actually been published yet. So we can't really say, go out and grab it or an

ything yet. And that, for one, put it off the main list. Now, this felt like playing a which-way book, especially when we confirmed that you can die by going the wrong way. And yes, you're just supposed to start over like you would in a which-way book when you die and play through a second time knowing where you went wrong. So I wanted to call this series out. Now, Deanna doesn't necessarily agree with me that these are countless puzzle games, but I don't know. It's got that which-way feel. To m

e, it feels quite a bit like Ghost in the Machine and a few of the other games tonight, the Coded Chronicles. I think there's some overlap there, but I know she doesn't agree with me. We argued about this earlier. It's a which-way book. It's a super fun which-way book. It totally captures the feel of the books it's based on, but it is not a mystery game or a puzzle game. I don't know. The puzzle was you had to go in and find three coins and then put them in the chest in the right order. How is t

hat not a puzzle? No, no. The puzzle is not remembering which parts of the story I want to revisit when I go back and die. I don't know. I don't see it. And plus, it has, like I said before, it has stats. It has ruling. There's random attributes. All of those things, to me, make it not a mystery game. All right. Fair enough. So there you have 13 mystery escape room style games, maybe 12, depending on who you ask, that we recommend. Now it's time for a quick check-in with our lobby, our chat room

here on Twitch, who it ends up aren't really into these games, but maybe we've convinced them to check some of them out. So out of our entire chat room tonight, the only game that got called out that has been enjoyed a lot of fun is Chronicles of Crime, the original version of the game. Eggman Jr. said they had a lot of fun with that game. So that's fantastic. And hopefully, maybe we've convinced you tonight to check out more escape room mystery style games. Do you have anything you want to add

before we move on? No, that kind of convinced me to maybe go try the original Chronicles of Crime, which I have to say, until trying the 1400, I had zero interest in. Fair enough. All right. Now that we've heard from the chat, how about you listening at home or watching on YouTube? What murder mystery, puzzle, and escape room games would you recommend we try out? These can be the puzzle-heavy type I like, or the solve the crime style Deanna prefers. We'd love to hear about both. Let us know by

commenting, sending an email off to moe@TabletopBellhop.com, or hitting me up on social media, where I can be found everywhere as TabletopBellhop, one word. Or if you want to yell at me about something, you can find me at Deanna at TabletopBellhop.com. And now a word about our sponsor, Grand Gamers Guild. We've been a big fan of their games for quite a while now. Now, we originally discovered them through the abstract strategy game, Gorinto, which I actually had the pleasure of playing an early

prototype copy and actually had some feedback back then that got it included in the game, which is pretty awesome. But we still love Gorinto and we still love Grand Gamers Guild's games. Like since then, we have played a number of their games. The Holiday Hijinks series we called out earlier today are by Grand Gamers Guild. And now since we've got Deanna here, I thought it'd be worth getting her thoughts on their games. So what are your favorite games from Grand Gamers Guild? I mean, Gorinto, of

course. But I think you've talked about that one enough on the show. I really dig Chiseled. That entire deck shedding versus deck building thing, I super enjoyed that game. And I always enjoy bringing it to the table and showing it to someone new and the reaction to it. So I found that one fascinating. And I think Aldabas. It's got a subtitle, The Doors of Cartagena. It doesn't get as much love as it deserves. That game is super fun, even though I don't care for the vaults. You have to jury rig

something there. But aside from that, that game is so good. And I've really been digging The Artemis Project, and I can't wait to dive into the expansion for that one. All right. Now, if any of these sound great to you, you can pick them up direct from Grand Gamers Guild. GrandGamersGuild.com. All one word. Where you can use our exclusive code BELLHOP, that's B-E-L-L-H-O-P, to save 10%. While there, be sure to subscribe to their newsletter. Keep up with their latest news and releases, because I

know they have some big things coming for 2024. Welcome to our review of Ghost in the Machine, an immersive murder mystery game from the Mysterious Package Company, a Canadian publisher who we have to thank for sending us a preview copy of this game. The Ghost in the Machine originally called London Gothic the Ghost in the Machine, which for some reason they dropped the London Gothic thing. Was originally published in 2022 and got a second printing in 2023. And as of right now is currently betw

een printings with a new version due out sometime this year. Now, this is a murder mystery set in Victorian era London that is presented in a unique first-person perspective through the use of two novel-sized books and a variety of cool props. Now the Ghost in the Machine is listed as playing one to six players ages 12 plus with a duration of over eight hours. Now it's my wife and Bellhop partner here who was the one that played through the game along with our youngest daughter and her mother. A

nd I know you have some concerns about these numbers. Well, we actually started playing this game together as a family with my mom and Moe and myself and our two kids who are ages 13 and 16. And I will get into this more in a wee bit, but the game has a lot of read-out-loud components. So we're here taking turns reading and some of the content was just way too descriptive and too gruesome for our kids. So we ended up having to stop the night and put the game aside and we didn't even pick it back

up for a few months. So your mileage may vary on what you consider gruesome. So let me define it. And I'm aware that what upsets my kids may be no big deal for someone else, right? But this is all right from starter info, so this doesn't spoil anything. The murder mystery you're solving in this game involves two fellows who fell or perhaps were pushed into a giant piece of machinery in a cotton mill circa 1896. And there are some, you know, semi-detailed descriptions of folks being mangled by m

achinery. In particular, there is a very vividly described trip to the coroner's office and that was the part where we ended up stopping during our first play. My kids were like, no, I'm done. And there is a, right at the end of that passage in the book, there's a line drawing, it's not graphic at all, of a severed limb. It's just a black and white line drawing of a severed limb sitting in a coroner's tray. And other than that piece of line art, there's really nothing visually graphic at all. It

's just words, lots of descriptive words. So a while later, we went back to the game and I took on the role of reading the text and then I was just skipping over anything that was too graphic or violent. And despite the fact that I promised to skip over anything gross, our eldest kid sat it out. She wanted nothing at all to do with this game. And the 13-year-old very much wanted to know what was going to happen next. So we started playing again. We're playing and it's a really long game that we

ended up breaking into three or four sessions. And partway along, she said some of the themes are a bit much and I would actually have preferred not to have played this. But I don't want to quit now because I need to know what's going to happen in the story. So the themes that she found upsetting were, okay, this is a historic piece. It's set in London of 1896, right? So we're talking about child labour. There's some very young children who are not necessarily being cared for in a very nice mann

er. And they describe the corpse of a child at one point in the story. There's also rat baiting, which if you're not familiar with that term, it's basically a form of gambling where they toss a dog in a pit with some hungry rats and they take bets on the outcome. And some of the descriptions for the rat baiting were pretty graphic. So yeah, my 13-year-old did not like that. So overall, would I call the game appropriate for ages 12 and up? It depends on the child, but I think maybe a slightly hig

her number would have been more appropriate. Yeah. Some of the descriptions in this were over the top and you're looking at violence against children and violence against animals, which is instantly going to turn some people off. So fair warning on this one. No, we're not going to get into that detail or any of that in this review whatsoever. Now, I will say we didn't see this coming in, but we did have a prototype copy of the ship to us. Checking out Mysterious Package Company's website, they h

ave gotten way more detailed about what to expect. There are actual paragraphs on their website talking about who this is appropriate for, which talks about things like child labor and does give you a better heads up on who this game is for. Here, we thought we were getting a family-friendly murder mystery game, and it wasn't nearly as family-friendly as we thought. Now, the way Ghost in the Machine is designed, what it is, is a package that shows up that kind of looks like it was sent to you by

people in the game, right? Like the experience starts right with the shipping package and then what's inside just carries on this theme. And it's super cool and impressive. Now, you can get a spoiler-free look at this through our Ghost in the Machine's unboxing video on YouTube. And I got to say, it's just fantastic. You can see my reaction as I open up the stuff. Now, what do you think of the impact this had when you first opened it up? Oh, it was so much fun to open. And it just immediately g

ot everyone's attention at the table. We were all drawn into it. It comes in a plain brown cardboard box, which is, I think it's got like a couple stamps on it. Like you said, it's marked confidential. And when you flip it open, there's this neat, like it's plasticky when you touch it, but it looks like leather. It's a file folder. And when you open that up and you have to like undo the threads and open it up and inside there is the game. There's bunches of all these little brown paper bags that

are stamped and labeled as your evidence packages. And there's a newspaper clipping and there's a little pamphlet book that's your London directory. And then there's two penny novels. And just the whole thing is just super fun to open and check out. And it's very evocative of the time period. So you're immediately, you know, called into the game. Okay. So what is the setting here? We kind of mentioned it a bit already, but what is this game going to be about? So it's set in London in the 1890s.

And as I mentioned earlier, there's a murder in a cotton mill and you're taking on the role of a private detective who's taking on the case as a favor for a friend. Now, the way you actually play through this game is to open up the case, right? Dump everything out. Then you're going to find some instructions that tell you how to play, right? That's how you get started. Now, the one thing the instructions are going to call you out to do, and I strongly recommend you do this, is make sure you hav

e everything. It gives you a checklist. Not that we had any problems. Our copy of Ghost in the Machine was perfectly fine, but we've had experience with other murder mystery games that were missing components. Yes. As I know from other games when we've run into this issue, getting a couple of hours in and realizing something is missing is no fun. So check off the list. Now, the two key items in this case at the start of the game are the two novel-sized books. I can't stress that these are thick.

These are their little pocket books, right? The game is split over two parts with each part using a different book. You start the game by finding book one and reading it like a novel. Eventually, you'll be presented with different choices. What will send you to different sections of the book? Which way style? So there's a couple of things going on with the books. You've got this thin booklet that is the Business and Residential London Directory for 1896, and if you want to follow a lead, you mi

ght look someone up by their name in that directory, and then next to that name, there'll be a three-digit code, and then you've got those two thick novels Mo was describing, which are their which-way books. There's part one and two. So that three-digit code will represent a numbered section in the book, and then to visit that person, you go there and read that section of the book, and you can think of it as if each numbered section of the book represents a location that you're visiting, and the

n once you're at a location, you might end that reading that section of the book with a which-way-like decision, or it might say, okay, if you want to do this, then go to page blah, blah, blah, and if you want to do something else, go to this page, or you might just read the section and it ends there, or it might give you a hint for something to look for in the directory or a hint towards one of the puzzles you're trying to solve. And then you're back to thinking of leads to look up and places a

nd people to visit. So you're not just following which way, branching paths through the book. There's a lot of intuitive puzzle solving and sleuthing going on to figure out which parts of the books to read. Yeah, because you're basically exploring the game through the book. And at the beginning, you've got the directory and while the book itself telling you go here or go here, it does start off very linear. The very beginning of the game I played through was just started like a which way book, b

ut then it quickly opened up because you start to unlock other ways to use these books. Like there's the directory on later. You're going to unlock a map of London or a warehouse set of warehouse blueprints. Well, you have to visit a spot on the map. You look up the entry in the book. All of this really leads to a fascinating and well done open world feel where you feel like you can explore things at the pace you want and in the order you want. Yeah, it ends up being really intuitive and it feel

s like you're really just exploring an open world and figuring out things on your own instead of being led down a linear pathway. Yeah. And in a brilliant bit of design, some of the passages may direct you to different places based on what you've done. So for example, I've clearly remember early in the game, you went to visit a specific woman and it said, do you have your hat? And if you do go to this section, otherwise keep reading. Yeah. The book will say something vague, like if a child sent

you here, go to this other number. Otherwise come on in, which will allow you to visit the same locations at different points in the storyline. And the vague statements will make sense when the time comes, but they won't spoil the story at all prematurely. Yep. Now, as you go, you're going to be instructed to open various sealed envelopes, which will unlock more clues, more evidence, and one of the coolest bit, little tchotchkes, right? Like little artifacts, neat things you get to kind of hold

on. to. Now, don't go thinking this is just a game about reading. You are going to have to take notes. You're going to have to pay attention to what's in those passages. You're going to have to use the various things in the envelopes and the various pieces of evidence to solve puzzles. And you're going to have to use deduction to figure out where to go next. And I got to say, the game does some really clever things with numbers, making it so that it's just much more than just reading through a w

hich-way book. Yeah, it is so much more than just a which-way story. There are puzzles and riddles to solve, and there's tons of sleuthing to be done. You have to take detailed notes, like very detailed notes, and pay attention. And of all the various mystery games I've played, this is the one that had me digging back through our notes the most often. Now, one big advantage of this book-driven system is that you can basically stop and save your game or stop at any point. Like, stopping and start

ing is really just finish reading a passage, throw a bookmark in the book, or write down where you stopped and put everything back in the case. Though again, we're going to stress the fact, keep good notes, because when you come back, you want to make sure you can remember where you were and where you were headed to. Yeah, saving the game is super easy, and I really appreciated that. We ended up breaking it into several sessions. It is designed, when you read the instructions of the game, that s

ays please play this in at least two settings. It's got a very logical break-point between book one and book two, but I have to give you a warning that you don't want to go too long between playing, because there are a lot of small details and clues, and you just meet tons of different characters. There's lots of stuff to remember, and you need to keep things fresh in your mind. We picked it back up at one point after not playing for a couple weeks, and we were both just, my mom and I, which wer

e, we were somewhat, you know, running things a bit more than my kid was. We were just both spinning our wheels trying to figure out where we had left off. Now finally, as far as how the game plays, I do want to call out something I think is very important, and it was one of the things I most wanted to know about going into this. You can make bad choices and wrong decisions while playing Ghost in the Machine. You can lose this game. The choices you make do matter. It's not just following the pat

h. Yeah, you can reach a dead end, quite literally, and the game instructs you to just back it up, rethink your choices, make a different choice, and keep going. Yeah, so it kind of comes with its own put your thumb on the last page, just in case things go wrong. Now another thing that's featured here, like any good mystery game, is a full graduated hint system, but you won't find this in the box, which I found that a little disappointing, having seen the same company do something similar in oth

er products. The only way you can find this is online. It's part of the Mysterious Package Company website. There's nothing in the product to help you out. Now, as someone outside the system, I was the one. I wasn't playing all the games. I didn't take part in every every session. I even missed the end of it, but as someone who was outside, I went through this hint system to kind of help them out while they were playing, and it was really good at just giving you a little bit of information at a

time. It does a really good job of not spoiling things until you want it to, and it even explains the final solutions when you get there. So it's like, this is how you should have got to this point. Now, from what I remember, the only time your group actually needed it was that time when you took an extended two or three weeks off, and you needed to be reminded of something you already knew. It was someone you had talked to who presented a piece of evidence you couldn't remember who it was. So t

hankfully, with me not being intimately involved with it, I was able to check that out on the clue system and just go, okay, the person's name was this. Yeah, I was certain we were going to remember things that ended up forgotten, and more notes should have been made. If I remember correctly, there was something else we got stuck up on, but it was in the errata, and we did have a prototype copy for this. So that is something else you will find on the Mysterious Package Company web page. There is

an errata for this game that's up there, and they have pointed out that they are fixing all these problems as they find them in the later printings. So at this point, if you get the newest printing of the game, which should be coming this year, you shouldn't have to worry about this, but it is worth checking that errata. Overall, from my point of view, from the outside, as someone who plays a lot of board games and who's still fairly new to murder mystery style games and escape room games, I th

ought Ghost in the Machine was brilliantly designed. I loved the different ways the game had you putting numbers together to get you to different places, the way things progressed in the game, and that whole system for like, do you have your hat? Do you have your coat? So it knew you were here later. And that's actually a big part that the second book did, because you have some of the same numbers in there, but now that you're in the second half, it knows that time has progressed and what's chan

ged in the world. It did a fantastic job of feeling realistic. It felt like time was passing. And I just thought it was really neatly done, the various ways they had you get to sections in the book. Yeah, it was really clever. And even just looking folks up in the directory, it was not always as straightforward as that could sound, because you have to figure out someone's full name. You have to figure out the name of the location. Yeah, you know, we went to a pub, but like, which pub? What part

of the city are we in? You know, all of this stuff. It was, it ended up, it was super fun. I remember there being similar names, as well as multiple family names that were the same, and you didn't know which one to go to. And if you went to the wrong one, that could lead to bad things. Yeah. For the bits that I heard of the story, it sounded fantastic. It was engaging. The language used might take a bit to get used to. It definitely is going for an 18, what is it, 1830s, whatever it is, late 180

0s vibe. The overall description of everything. The writer of this is very descriptive. To me, it felt like the Lord of the Rings of the mystery novels, with the amount of different ways dust particles were described. The griminess of everything, and the on-the-nose political issues of the time. Again, I don't want to spoil anything, but some of the things that were happening in the game were very appropriate for the time period, very immersive, and honestly, I would go so far as to say educatio

nal. Yeah. Overall, the writing was top-notch. It's part of what set this game apart from all the other various mystery games we've played, for me. It's just phenomenal writing, believable motivations, solid and consistent characterizations, and tons of vivid characters described in the game. Playing the game led to some interesting conversations with our one kid about the history of the child labor laws, which actually ended up being some really interesting, teachable conversations that I reall

y enjoyed. As for things to watch out for, the biggest one, of course, is the one we already called out, which is the tone of the game. The graphic descriptions, the horrific things that happen in the games, the way some of the characters are treated. This game does not pull punches. The story is not nice. This is not a feel-good story. We'll put it that way. Another thing to watch for, we already called this out, is watch for errors. Our copy of the game did have a few. Check the errata. Go onl

ine. Make sure you know what needs to be fixed. We had an entire paragraph that just cut off. If I remember correctly, that didn't lead to any... Like, there was no missed clue. If I remember, there was nothing wrong with our copy that would break anything. The game was playable, but there were some cut-off sentences that just didn't quite make sense. You played through it, not me. Was there anything that literally was game-breaking? I don't think there was. No. They used an inconsistent first n

ame for one character. They'd obviously decided to change. But it was just in the newspaper, they had one first name, and everywhere else in the story, they had a different first name. And I think... I said we had the prototype copy, so I'll cut them some slack there. I'm going to assume that was fixed. Fair enough. We've called this out already, too, but time between sessions and forgetting things. Take lots of notes. That's the best I can say, is take lots and lots of notes. Even though you th

ink you're going to remember it, you might not. Another thing... Sorry. Another thing I would call out, just because the chat room mentioned this, so we are recording this on Twitch, EggmanJr in the chat room called out the price of these games. For one-and-done games, they are a bit pricey, and I can't disagree with that. This is a high-quality product, though. You get a lot of cool things. The component quality, what's in the package. Honestly, it's hard to say, but I would say it's worth it,

but that's going to depend on your personal budget for board gaming. It's the hours, too. This is not a 60-minute and solve it. They suggest 8 to 10 hours for this game, so that makes it more worthwhile. If you look at the cost of exit games that play an hour each, you would need 10 of them to get to the same amount of gameplay, so that is a good consideration. Now, a question I have for you, and I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this. Nothing was destroyed while we played this, correct? No,

nothing was destroyed. The evidence bags were all opened, but if you wanted to just reseal them in some paper bags and label them A, B, C, D, E, B, that's it. The only thing is that we tore open the evidence bags. And we didn't tear them, we just tore the stickers to get them open. Yes, they are no longer sealed. Yeah, so this one is re-playable. Again, not re-playable for the same group, because you'll know the answer. You'll know who done it, but yeah, these are re-playable. The directory they

give you, they suggest that that's also your notebook, and at the back of directory it lists some contacts, which you do use as leads, and then there's some blank pages there for you to write on, but we didn't actually write in it. So I guess if you wrote in it... Yeah, fair. One thing I do want to call out is there is a lot of reading in this. A lot. You are reading through two novels to get to the end of this. And because of that, to me it felt more like a single player experience. Now again,

I wasn't the one playing. I was kind of sitting on the sidelines, I'd watch them play for a while, or, you know, I was off in a corner playing a solo game, or at one point I played some Taiko Drum Master. But this seemed like it would... The way I see someone best enjoying this game is sitting in your big room with your bookshelves all around you, and your big high-back chair in your fireplace, and it's sitting next to you, next to the fire, and you sit down. When you've got an hour with your s

moking jacket on, and you read a few paragraphs, and you grab your map and look up the next place, and you play it for like half an hour, or when you run out of time, and then you put it away, and you come back to it like you would an actual mystery novel. Now, Mysterious Patrick's Company says this is a game for one to six players. You play to three. I cannot see how six players could keep engaged to this, unless they really like story time. Okay, I get what you're saying about this being a goo

d game to play solo, but I enjoyed playing it with three people, and I think two to three is probably the sweet spot. Okay. I like the shared experience, like I like that I had this shared experience with my mom and our kid, you know, that was okay, and I like having multiple brains at the table for different points of view, and it's nice to have someone else taking the notes while you're doing all the reading aloud. True, okay. But it was a lot of reading out loud, and I mean a lot. I remember

we went sort of long on the one session, and by the end, I was starting to lose my voice from reading out loud so much. See, the other thing that also makes me think of it as a solo experience, though, is the writing. Because this is written in first-person perspective, not third. It's written as if you are the detective. It's all happening to you, which kind of breaks the immersion when there's three of you being you. Yeah. All right, I get it. I'll give you that one. I still think it was more

fun with multiple people. Fair. Overall, we think anyone that enjoys a good mystery is going to enjoy this game. People who like to sift through evidence, check the facts, corroborate stories, dates and times, you know, detail-oriented gamers who also enjoy some puzzles, I think you're going to love The Ghost in the Machine. This game feels like playing through an interactive detective novel, but completely analog. It does, but this is definitely not just a witch way book. Yeah. There's more to

it than that. Some of the puzzles are really clever, and you have to work hard to put together all the various bits of information you're provided to solve the mystery. Sometimes even just keep the story going. Now, I already admitted this isn't really my style of game, which is why I let Deanna, her mom, and Jen go to it after our first night playing. While I enjoy puzzle games, I don't mind some social introduction games. I'm just not a sift-through-all-the-evidence, solve-the-crime style of g

ame fan. Right. So this was not the game for you. If you want to solve puzzles or you want more of an escape room game, this is not the game. If you want a big multiplayer game that's going to be great for six or more people, no, not this one. If you don't like storyline and you just want to skip ahead to the next puzzle, you are playing the wrong game. If you are squeamish about mildly descriptive Gore, then you probably want to skip this one. And if you do not like reading text, a ton of text,

this is not the game for you. Same for on the opposite side, listening. If you are not for listening to tons of text. I don't think there's something I just thought of. I don't think you would have enjoyed this game at all if you weren't the one reading. When we were swapping off, it was okay, but to keep engaged, I can't sit there and listen to story time for too long. I'll fall asleep. Yeah, that's totally fair. So yeah, if you dig mysteries, check this game out. Do you have anything else you

want to add before we wrap up this review? Okay, possible mild spoilers. So if you don't want details about any of the contents of the evidence bags, stick your fingers in your ears for this part. I don't think it's a huge spoiler to say that at some point in the game, you will need a key to unlock a door, and they give you a physical metal key. And it was totally unnecessary, just a prop, a nice detail that added to the excitement. And it gave my kid something neat to keep after the game was d

one. She ended up turning it into a necklace. So I thought that was kind of cool. That's it. Overall, I love this game so much. It was a super enjoyable experience. It left me wanting to rush over to their website and go order something else in the post-mortem series. Yeah, which is fair. This really impressed me compared to other escape room mystery style games. This was definitely a step above. So there you have our look at The Ghost in the Machine, a first-person perspective murder mystery se

t in Victorian London from the Mysterious Package Company. A game my mystery-loving wife thinks is the best there is on the market right now. What's a game in this genre you've tried and have greatly enjoyed? We'd love to hear about it in the comments, through an email to to moe@TabletopBellhop.com, or through social media, where I can be found everywhere as TabletopBellhop. Don't worry, I'll pass your thoughts on to Deanna. Or you know what? You can actually talk to her directly through the Tab

letop Bellhop Discord. While she may not be active on social media, I know she checks our Discord every day. You can find that at discord.tabletopbellhop.com. And now we come to the Bellhop's Tabletop, where we talk about the games that have been hitting our tables lately. Now we're going to start things off with a barbershop bar game night we co-hosted on the weekend. Event had pretty good turnout. Wasn't our busiest, but not our slowest for sure. And it was awesome to see some people out we ha

ven't seen in a while. That is always awesome. Plus, new people! There was a significant number of people who had come out to one of our events for the first time. And I've got to thank the barbershop bar for sharing it in their own personal Facebook group. That seemed to be where these people came from. So thank you for that additional promotion. I got to say, everyone, as far as I could tell, seemed pretty happy by the end of the night, and I think it went well. Yeah, it was a good turnout. It

was fun. I was glad I went. I met some new folk. I got back to the table. Some people I've met at past events, and I just had a good time. I had fun teaching Gwen to play Zensū, which technically I could have done at home. She had the same problem that I had the first time that the game was shown to me, is that it takes a bit to click in, right? She kept going, oh! And getting really frustrated with herself that it won't click in, that you can jump and you can land on pieces to capture. And. ea

ch piece can move four directions in varying numbers, and it's a lot to keep. track of all at once. So she was getting a bit frustrated with it, and she wants to play it again. She was frustrated. Yeah, I guess I feel the same way playing that game. I get mad at myself. I'm not mad at my opponent for outplaying me. I'm mad at myself for making a silly mistake. That's where that game is. It's frustrating, but like her, every time we finish, I'm like, let's go again. Let's go again. I'm going to f

igure this out. I want to play a game without making a mistake. Though as Sean pointed out, maybe that's how every game of Zensū ends, is you make a mistake. Personally, I started the night getting a group of five people together to play the Stuff of Legend. This is the hidden traitor game with the stuffies who go into the closet to try to save their boy from the boogeyman, which Sean and I talked about last. week. The second play of this game went way better than the first, as often happens. I

now knew the I better knew what to expect. I could better explain to the players what to expect, which is very important in this game. I could better explain the traitor role and how the odds of finding a traitor were more clear to me. It was a very tight game. I will say one thing that was neat that was different with five players is you had the colonel's heir, but you didn't have Spot's friend or whatever. So there was only one guaranteed loyal player at the start of the game. So that was a li

ttle change. Game played really well. People loved the evocative artwork. They were totally into the theme. They all wanted more story, which is something I think we all said, like the locations, like you just, you want a description of the location, not just reveal this card and discard it or reveal this card and put one troop on the spot and discard it. Tell me something about that spot. The gameplay itself was very tight. This game ended with the group making it to an exit and leaving. So tha

t's better than we did the first game, but sadly, it was not the right one. Similar to the first game we played, due to a number of bad coin flips, the boy was going to be potentially lost on the next flip. So the group agreed to just beeline it for the closest portal. No one had peeked at anything and hope for the best. In the end, it was the boogeyman who won along with myself and Cindy. I mean, the boogeyman won during our first play too. Maybe that's a thing. Maybe it's just tilted toward th

e good guys losing. I don't know. We'll have to play some more games to test it out. Yeah. I'm a little shocked because usually Hidden Traitor games are lean towards the good guys and it's the traitor who has to figure out the role to get it to go the other way. So one of the things... But what if Shadows over Camelot? Yep. Like that game was just hard. Yes. Without a traitor. It's just tilted that way. Yeah, it's possible. Yeah. One thing I need to figure out, though, is what to do about the lo

yalty for the game teacher, right? Because by being the person teaching a game, you are in a position of power and trust when sitting down to a board game. And by me being a traitor, I just basically didn't play traitor. I'm like, because I am actively helping the people to play, but because they don't know the game, not because of anything in-game or my role. I'm just helping, like, you realize you can play this type of card now. You realize you can do this. And it would have been really easy f

or me to just be terrible and BS people, but I wasn't going to do that. So, like, I don't know. I almost want to take out the error of the Colonel card, the one loyalty card where you know that player is loyal and they're also the person that breaks votes and make that player be me. Or if someone else was teaching him, let it be them. Because it just, it was awkward playing the stuff a legend as a traitor when I'm also the one teaching the game to everyone. Yeah, that makes sense. And, you know,

your alignment can change during the game. So I don't think it'd be to a detriment to have you just always start as the one who's teaching it. Right. As that set. Right. Because then once we switch cards with someone, it's all up in the air. But by the time that happens, you probably played the game enough that everyone gets it by then. Now, do you have any thoughts from our first play? Because you weren't here last week to share your thoughts. Yeah, I actually really enjoyed our first play. An

d then I was dissecting it later and I thought maybe it was just because it was still novel. And it was a real sense of discovery as we were, you know, exploring the game, flipping up new cards and stuff. It was a curiosity for what was going to happen next. And I really like the aesthetic. I like the theme. And it made me curious to check out the comic books. And I was amused because it was the first time that I played a game with, we might have with the older kid, but I think this was the firs

t time with the younger kid where we played a hidden traitor game and I betrayed them. And days later, our youngest was randomly coming up to me and being like, you, you betrayed me. Mom, the betrayer. And it just, it made me laugh, you know. And that was her being silly. That wasn't her being scarred. That's her sense of humor. It was just, yeah, we were having a good chuckle over it. So that amused me. While you were off playing Stuff of Legend, I was having fun learning a new game. So Eggman

Jr. had brought out his copy of Brian Boru. So first off, I really love it when I don't have to teach and I love sitting down and learning a new game. Wait, wait, did someone clip that? Right now? Deanna just said, I love sitting down and learning a new game. I do. I do. Actually, I love learning new games. I just hate not getting old games ever back to the table. It's two different things. So Brian Boru is an interesting mix of card drafting and trick-taking and area majority. So you win tricks

and that lets you claim cities. But even when you lose a trick, you get to claim a reward based on the card that you played. And honestly, deciding what to throw away when was more fun than trying to win the tricks. It was a neat game. I'd love to give it a second go sometime. Yeah, I want to try that one. You know how much we love trick-taking games. And well, now you're throwing all these things. The only thing I was shocked by is that it's a long trick-taking game. I expect short from trick-

taking. There was a learn, like it was a learning game. There was a teach at the beginning. And I do know you had some brand new players. So next up for me, I kept the same group. We talked about splitting up, but everyone seemed to be doing their own thing at the time. And we just had a good experience playing. a cooperative game together, right? Well, semi-cooperative game. So the group was already kind of gelling. So honestly, to be fair, Stuff A Legend was a good icebreaker game in a way. Be

cause I did have people at the table. I had played with everyone at the table independently, but it was the first time some of them had played with each other. What I broke out then was Endangered. This is from our sponsor, Grand Gamers Guild. The game about saving a species. And in this case, we played the tigers. And holy cow, I think that was one of the best game experiences I've had at the Barbershop Bar. The group I was with were just into it. They were really digging it. People were asking

, where do I get this game? It was one of the feats. Everyone was like, yeah, thanks for getting it. No, people were like, oh, Mo, thank you for teaching me that game at the end. Like, oh, thank you for teaching that. Thank you for inviting us to your table. And I'm like, yes, I get thanks at the end, but this was emphatic, enthusiastic enjoyment of Endangered. Now, I've enjoyed the game. And the kids enjoyed the game. And your mom enjoyed the game. But even our whole family playing together did

n't have the excitement, the tension, the leaning in, the, we've got to get these votes. We've got to get, oh, what's this? Why don't you do that? And honestly, despite the game being really easy to quarterback, there wasn't that though. This felt more like collaboration, which was really cool to see. And I got to say this was the closest game we ever had where we won. We did lose the first voting round and it was lost by a die roll. Like, it was just a matter of if we had rolled a four or highe

r, we would have won the first round. The second voting round, we only secured four votes, even though we had five countries with influence and only got that last vote on the player's turn. Now at this point though, we'd left nothing to random chance. We knew we had it. It was just a matter of figuring out, deducing, solving the puzzle of how to have enough influence groups in the right spot and to make sure we were safe no matter what cards came up, where the devastation happened or when the, I

forget what the flip up a card bad thing happens. Do you have anything you want to say about Endangered since we haven't heard your thoughts yet? That's awesome that everyone had such a good time playing that one. It has the cutest darn meeple ever. Like, we have that mini expansion that's sitting there waiting to be played and it has monarch butterfly Meeples. They're just so damn cute. And otters, otter meeple. I was amused because we played it with Sean and I'm like, look, we have otters. I

like the deeming. I like the whole dice placement mechanic. The way you need to place a higher die and the way your spots remain locked, used up until your next go. So that picking out who will go when ends up being a big part of the strategy. Yeah. All right. Next one for me is I taught a quick game of The Chameleon. I had just picked it up the day before for the family day weekend. We asked the kids, what do you guys want to do? And we're like, play board games and we want to go thrifting. So

we actually drove around the city, hit a bunch of thrift stores, and I managed to find a complete copy of the chameleon for $2.75 or something ridiculous like that. And took a risk on it. I pushed my luck because this was found at a Goodwill. And unlike Value Village, who just kind of puts tape over, sorry, elastics on their games, they put tape, packing tape, so much packing tape. They obviously did not want you to check to see if this game was complete. Now, I don't know, and what I'd hope is

they did this already in the back room and they've checked to see if it's complete and then taped it. up. But it was so much tape. But I got it home, brought it home, opened it up and like not only complete, but like in excellent shape. Like, you know how some card games instead of shrink wrap have that little paper sleeve to hold the cards? Someone had put them back in the sleeves. I don't even do that. I take good care of my games and I don't keep the cards in their little sleeves. So that was

pretty nice. Yeah. When you first opened it, you were trying to figure out if it had even been played. Yes. Overall, it was pretty cool for a thrift store find. You lucked out there. Yeah, it was a nice one. Now, for those that don't know The Chameleon, it's a social deduction game, which sounded great in theory, but the first actual play was rougher than I expected. So what the game is, the real basics are that everyone knows a word and everyone in the group, everyone playing knows the word ex

cept one player. That one player is the chameleon. The goal of the people who know the word is to find the chameleon. The goal of The Chameleon is to stay hidden, blend in with everyone else so they don't get found out. Now the words are grouped on a grid, so they're kind of together. So like we actually had fantasy series as one of them, which was kind of cool. We had another one was a geography and it was various types of landscapes and so on. So you get these different kind of things, so you

kind of have an idea what you're talking about. And the whole thing is it goes around the group and you go, you're only allowed to say one thing. So think Codenames. It really reminded me of giving clues in Codenames where you say one word and it goes to the next player. So then they say a word, they say a word, they say a word, they say a word, then everyone votes. That had a steeper than I expected learning curve. Like when I read it, I'm like, that sounds fantastic. That sounds great. It soun

ds like a great game. Then we sat down to play it and it is so hard as the players who know the word to not just spoil it. Right. So in our first game, Cav's like: "Hobbits" I'm like, you don't even have to know what the words are to know what that probable word clue is. Like you don't even need the category, right? Well, the fun part when he said that, though, was that the chameleon then just played along and we ended up guessing the wrong person because everyone said something that applied to

Lord of the Rings. So I don't know, it's fascinating, but there's a learning curve there that I wasn't expecting. I have a feeling this is going to take more plays or I'm going to have to play it more so I can teach it with a bit of a lead in. The biggest problem, though, is the loyalty card problem, which is the person that is not the chameleon is given this giant grid that they have to look up 2d6 on to find and then compare it to something that's on the table, whereas the chameleon gets a car

d that says you are the chameleon. And I hate that because if anyone's paying attention, they're going to know who the chameleon is. So I get into this in a lot more detail over on our Patreon. So what I did Tuesday, I actually posted up a full first thoughts article where I go into a lot more detail about this game, why I picked it up, what had me convinced it was going to be great and why it didn't quite go as well as I thought. So head over to patreon.com/tabletopbellhop to learn even more of

my first impressions of the chameleon. Yeah, that's that's interesting. Like it's a social deduction game, which normally, no, not for me. But I'm kind of curious to try this one out. Now, one of the things you'll like is the only deception is if you're the chameleon and at that final round, when players are like, you, you must be the chameleon. And you're like, no, not me. I'm not. Like up until that point, you're just trying to fit in. You're giving honest answers. So I did appreciate that as

pect of it. That looking up on the grids reminded me of Psychobabble. I remember playing Psychobabble and trying to pretend I'm looking at the wrong part of the board. Exactly. Exactly. It's the same thing. Oh, while you were doing that, I was teaching a game of Star Trek Super Skill Pinball. And a few things stood out for me here. I actually didn't mind teaching it. Nice. Yeah. So, I mean, it's a pinball game. Your ball falls down the table. That just makes sense. It felt easy to explain becaus

e of that. But I was explaining it to gamers, so that helped too. Again, one of the folks at the table wasn't a Star Trek fan, and in his words, had only ever seen maybe five episodes. But the game still worked and it was still enjoyable for everyone. Um, yeah, I just really dig that game. It was fun. And, um, we haven't tried some of the boards in that yet, and I'm excited to get to them eventually. Yeah, we have two more boards we haven't even touched yet. We've got the lower decks and then th

e next generation board table. So, yeah, looking forward to checking out more of that game. And I got to say, at this point, I've added Super Skill Pinball 4K to my wishlist. Though I was looking at the new one. There's a new expansion, like the Ramp It Up, I think it's called. Those boards look a little silly, but I now have the original. Now that I played the Star Trek, I want to check out the original. It's now on my wishlist. Next up, Sunday Night Gaming at These Mums, something we try to do

every weekend, where we almost literally cracked open Dimensions. Man, did that make a lot of noise. This is from Mysterious Package Company, the same company that makes Ghost in the Machine, which we reviewed earlier. And I got to say, despite being from the same company, this is a very different game than what we talked about at length earlier. Yeah, it's a totally different flavor. Ghost in the Machine is a murder mystery, and this is very much an escape room. Solve the puzzles with nice sto

ry bits to glue it all together. Now, anyone who's looked into this game has probably seen the pics of the Dollhouse. You might remember the Kickstarter, which did ridiculously well. What blew me away? Everyone's talking about the Dollhouse. But a big part of this game that I've never seen until we unboxed it ourselves is the journal. So what you have, and where the actual puzzles are, and where the clues are, is in this scrapbook. It is a scrapbook left by five previous investigators who came b

efore you and failed. And that is as much a part of the game as the big fold-out mansion. Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the Dollhouse is cool enough on its own, but that scrapbook? Just that, if you put that in a box and called it the game, would have been a pretty cool game all on its own, and a unique thing with lots of interesting... I don't want to... I'm always... With these, I don't want to spoil anything. Yeah. I'm flipping through, and there's some really unique stuff

in that book. Yeah, this one, though, is more of a puzzle side of things. There is a mystery. You are. trying to figure something out, and there are clues leading towards it. You're trying to figure out what's going on in the house, and you are trying to find out what happened to the previous investigators. But all of that is just leading you to solve very escape room-like puzzles. Now, the neat part is because you have this physical thing in front of you, it feels like an escape room. You're l

iterally manipulating things in rooms and holding things up to other things to compare them, counting things around the room. It just did such a great job. I don't even know how... This is an escape room in a box, because it gives you the whole dang room in the box. It's an escape the Dollhouse. Yes. And it's not just... It pops up furniture, and there's a toilet. There's cupboards. It was... I don't know. And yes, the toilet seat lifts. Yeah. It was just... It was neat. They did a really cool t

hing with a... I think they called it a recharge pack. I'm trying to remember what the actual terminology on it was. I thought it was a regifting pack. Regifting pack. But there's a big envelope in the box. And oh, yeah. And then also in the bottom of the box, there's a safe that's locked that's in the bottom of the box too. So again, that's something else that was neat. But there's this regifting pack, and so it lets you reset the game when you're done playing it so someone else can use it, whi

ch is cool. But what I liked was it had the little instructions there explaining that as you're playing the game, there'll be a little skull sign. And whenever you see that skull sign, you know you're free to tear it up, destroy it, manipulate it, write on it, whatever, because you're going to have this recharge version to replace so you can still give the game to someone else, which I thought was really cool. Yeah. I'm enjoying this one. This one's neat. There was just some neat stuff that you

couldn't get any other way. Like to solve one of the puzzles, you had to retrace someone's steps through the house. And I can't see doing that with an exit game or a which-way book, right? Like it had puzzles I don't think you could easily do in any other form, which I thought was neat. Like technically you could be looking at a map and tracing someone's path that way, but it just wouldn't have been as... Yeah, but it's not the same as this. This is very 3D. The puzzles were very 3D. Yeah. All r

ight. Next up is a five-player game of Dubious from Arcane Wonders. This is one off the pile of shame and obligation. First-time play. This was our first experience, so I'm sure we played extreme and messed up something and didn't do it properly. I may or may not do up a first thoughts over on Patreon, but what I will say at this point is this is just a uniquely placed game. It's a mix of indie role-playing game, improv-style indie role-playing game where you have to come up with stuff on the sp

ot, and a social deduction game. And not in a hidden traitor social deduction, in a try to figure out everyone's roles. It's a hidden traitor in the fact that everyone's a traitor, I guess. The basic mechanics here is everyone gets an occupation and a secret, and they're given two cards of each. So two occupation cards and two secrets. There are 14, I think, of each of these. So you know what you have, you know what you didn't take, you know how many players there are, and you're going to use th

at information to try to guess everyone else's occupation and secret. Now the role-playing comes in with, after you pick this, they actually tell you spend like two to five minutes thinking about a character. Like come up with who you are. Think about, you know, what your background is, what you look like, and all that stuff. Once everyone's got their character, you're going to go through a deck of question cards, and every game is going to have five of them. Two are based on appearance, and thr

ee are other generic questions. Everyone gets to answer the questions one at a time, and then at the end, you're going to refresh everyone by reading through all of them. And while you're answering the questions, everyone else has like a workbook that they're going to use to try to deduce what your occupation and secret is. Now, if you do this and everyone gets your occupation right, you know, like bang on, you got it right, no points, right? Think Dixit, scoring in a way. Same thing, if no one

guesses your occupation, terrible, no points. Now, if just one person out of your entire group gets your occupation wrong, that's perfect scoring. And a perfect game would be you get everyone else's right and every one person gets each of yours wrong. Very neat game. Yeah, I knew I was in for something interesting because you were sitting there reading the rulebook and you kept going, this is fascinating. I said, what are we playing next? You're like, it's fascinating. Yeah, it was super fun. Th

e kids got into it, everyone was laughing and having a good time. The role playing aspects were fun. I'm so glad we took this home as a review copy because it is not something I would have looked at twice, honestly. Yeah, right? Social deduction game. Why would Moe grab this one? Unless it's $2.75 at Goodwill. All right, last physical game of our last little period, our last gaming period since last time we were here is My City. Mr. Knizia and Cosmos, four of us, me, Dee, and the kids sat down a

nd finished all three games of Chapter 2, Churches. Which anyone who's picked up the envelope for Chapter 2 knows this is in here, so I'm not spoiling anything by saying this added new tiles to the game, new scoring opportunities, and the biggest change is less predictability, which I thought was fascinating. Now, I don't want to say too much because I don't want to actually spoil the game for anyone, but what I will say is this new stuff made the decisions harder. Honestly, at some points, agon

izing. Man, it's rough now. It's not the quick, light, fun game it was just one chapter ago. There's a lot more to think about. It's now more important than ever to plan ahead. And you're going to find yourself playing the odds, like to the fact that I would even say there's a push-your-luck element in this game now when you get to near the end of a chapter. Yeah, I mean, in this style of game, it's always neat because we started out identical, right? And as we go further now, we've really diver

ged at this point. And that part's been interesting to see how much we're different already and just into Chapter 2, right? I like how we play three games in a row, and I like how each individual game is nice and short. But overall, we're playing a full chapter, so that's just meaty enough to feel like we actually did something every time we sit down. So, I've been digging it. Though I may rename it to Misery City if it keeps up. Oh, yeah, I could see that. Yeah, I like how quick the games have

been going. Like, we wrapped up three rounds in about an hour, I think, maybe a little bit more. I wasn't actually watching. Yeah, I think it was about an hour. And I mentioned this last time and it still stays true. Despite the fact you are playing the same game three times in a row, the little subtle differences in each chapter have kept things fresh. Now, I will say from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2 was a significant change. There was a big step there. Things changed quite a bit. But between the th

ree chapters in Chapter 2, or the three games in Chapter 2, there was just a little tweak each time. Just a little thing that they changed that just made it slightly more interesting. And that, I think, is what makes it keep feeling fresh. Why I'm willing to play three games in a row. Yeah, exactly that. Like, it's just incremental. You're playing the same game over and over again with just small changes each time. And there's, I don't know, there's just something super satisfying about that. An

d there's also a lot of great catch-up mechanics that are built into the game, so there's no runaway leader problem. Yeah, at this point, our scores are all one point away from each other. Like, I think the biggest gap from first to last is two points on the overall scale of things. It might even be one point. The other thing we saw is the first tiebreaker. We had to go two tiebreakers apart from each other, which was kind of interesting to see, especially because our boards are not the same any

more. Like, the board you're playing on is different. The tiles in our supplies are now different. There, I guess that's a bit of a spoiler. Sorry, maybe I shouldn't have said that. So you did the tiebreaker, and then the tiebreaker, and then didn't you go to the third one? It was you and Jen. No, it was the second one. It was the second one, I think. Maybe it was the third. We tied. We tied on the tiebreaker. Then I think we went through the next tiebreaker. And there were more. Like, that's so

mething else I got to say. This game has more tiebreakers than any game I've seen, which is important because someone has to win because of the way you divvy up prizes at the end. And it does continue to do the thing where the winners tend to get punished and the losers tend to get bonuses. There was less punishing of the winners, which was nice to see, actually. Finally, I got one other one to talk about. I wanted to talk about this one with Sean. I don't even know if he's tried it yet, but the

re is now a Point Salad app. I don't even know who to thank, but someone got a hold of us email and offered us keys to check it out as long as we talk about it. I apologize for not even knowing. It's whoever developed the app. This is now on Steam, iOS, and Android. And the big thing here is it's cross-platform. So if you have it on Steam and I have it on iOS, and Deanna's got it on her Android phone, we could all play a game of Point Salad together. So far, I'm impressed with it. I haven't done

... I did more games than anyone else because I had to wait for Mexican food. So I got in a lot of solo plays, but we also did try a pass-and-play. It's Point Salad. It plays like Point Salad. If you know Point Salad, you know how to play this game. It is a little prettier. I thought the theme actually worked a little better here because I never noticed the point cards. We always talked about point cards were plates. So you're actually scoring what's on your plates at the end of the game. And I

totally missed that in the physical game, whereas on the app, it looks like plates. So I'm like, oh, that's cool. Finding a game was easy. I could have found someone online to play any time. There was no waiting rooms where I had to sit there for a while. It was just there. And like I said, the cross-platform seems great, though I will admit we haven't tried it yet. So I can't decide on this one. I need to play it a few more times. I've just played it once, pass-and-play. But just my gut reactio

n playing it once is I strongly prefer the paper version. I don't like how it keeps track of the math ongoing as you play. And I just... something about the way you have to toggle to look at which cards other people are collecting. I don't know, something about just... it didn't click for me. It just didn't feel as enjoyable. Yeah, I think it kind of has the problem I have with the Onitama app. You have to get the thing passed to you and then look to see what changed as opposed to seeing it happ

en. Maybe if we weren't playing pass-and-play, you would see what the other players are drafting. But then I think you'd still have to tap to be able to see their full spread. And yeah, I'm with you on the tracking everyone's score, because to me, that does take something away from the game. Yes, Point Salad is all open information. The math's not hard, but it does take some time to add up everyone's score. And you're not always willing to sit there before you draft a card to look at what everyo

ne else has and do all the math to make an optimal move. And if you play like that, you're probably just going to frustrate your opponents. And I've found some of the fun of Point Salad is getting away with something, right? Like someone not noticing that point card you have or not realizing you've got a combination going. And you can't get that from the app. No, that exactly right. You can't be sneaky. The game's just too transparent with everything. It is nice. I love pass-and-play games. I lo

ve that it has the pass-and-play feature. And I like that it's in your phone and we can pull it out when we don't have the game with us, which is actually why we ended up pulling it out that day. This is definitely more portable. All right. That's it for our games played. But you know what? We have Deanna here, and that doesn't happen all that often. And she's not always with us live. So are there any games we've been playing lately that you want to share your thoughts on? Especially if it's som

ething you disagree with Sean and I on. It doesn't have to be something we just played last week, like something we talked about two weeks ago or something when we were talking about kids table board games or something. Is there anything you'd like to share or do you have a new favourite game you want to hype? Well, I've already gone on about both Ghost in the Machine and Doomensions. So what else? I've really been enjoying Marrakesh. That one is just fun. There's something about that game I fin

d so satisfying. I think it's replacing Trajan as my new favourite Feld. I could talk about how much I've been loving Zensū, because that game is phenomenal. Oh my god, Destinies. We played Destinies. We finally got that to the table and I know Mo mentioned it I think it was last episode, but there's something about that game. Okay, there was this Amiga game that we played back in the day and I think it was called Darklands and it turns out it was based on the Dark Eye, which is Aventuria. So th

e setting just felt like that to me. It felt like that whole. Saints are real. We're going to go in the Middle Ages, church, God, Jesus, all of that, but it's all real. There are witches, there are werewolves, you can go pray and actually get blessed by God. That's what it reminded me of and also even the very witch way elements in the game reminded me of that as well. I don't know, it really did it for me. It felt like a roleplaying game, like a witch way book, like a really good which-way book

roleplaying game kind of thing going on. And even though I lost, I was super sucked into the game and couldn't wait to play it again. Fair enough. Yeah, I gotta say the first time you go into, I think we both did the same thing in the first scenario, you go in to talk to the priest and just seeing that menu of things you could do did give me flashbacks to Darklands or any of the other, that style of roleplaying game, not a computer roleplaying game, which I hadn't really even thought of it as a

computer roleplaying game, but it really does kind of scratch that itch. It feels like you're playing through, not a JRPG though, like a very Ameritrash RPG. Right, because I need you at that table to play this. I wouldn't want to be playing a solo. I don't know if you can play it solo. I wouldn't want to play a solo version. That two player interacting with you, playing against you, that's what brought the game, right? Yeah, yeah. Especially with you completing things I wanted to compete. Ther

e was definitely some competition there. That's the other thing that's worth calling out. I don't know how much we went into that last week. This is a competitive game. There is a winner. You are trying to win. This is not a cooperative adventure, happy, let's go save the town together game. When you're trying to hide your win condition and bluff a bit while you're trying to complete it, it's neat. Yeah, because if it becomes too obvious what your win condition is, the other player then can go t

ry to stop you from accomplishing it, which we didn't do a lot of that. But like once you saw, I don't want to spoil anything. Nevermind. I'll just stop. Yep. All right. As for the coming weeks, we'd like to talk about this. Hopefully things calm down for Sean. He gets through this tumultuous time with his job and his company still intact and we can start playing games with Sean again and we can get him back in the show. Not that we don't appreciate Dana being here, of course. I've got a bunch o

f unboxings recorded, like I think we counted them up the other day and it was like nine or 18 or something of them. So we're going to try to get out two of those a week in the future. Again, I didn't get through this week because again, Sean's the one that does the editing. I'm still working on catching up on written reviews. I did get a couple up this past week. So you can now find reviews of... what did I think are the ones? That's that's without me actually looking it up. Head over to Tablet

opbellhop.com to read those. Even if you've listened to our audio reviews, I do go into more detail in general in the written reviews, cover a few more things, and share lots of pictures. Now, as for games, I think Dee would slaughter me if I didn't allow us to continue playing Dimensions over at Brenda's on Sunday. And my youngest daughter has insisted we play Dubious again. So I think I'm going to be bringing both of those. And I'd like to, with the girls, get in another chapter of My City. I

don't know if there'll be much else going on, but we're going to try to at least fit those in by next week. Yeah, we're on the same page there. More Dimensions, more My City. I think the only other thing I'm doing is starting tomorrow and planning on looking at the list of publishers and. figuring out all the games I want to check out at Gamma because there's so much that I'm looking forward to there. Yeah, that is on our schedule for Thursday. Thursday is Gamma Day. We have so many emails from

people who want to meet up. We gotta whittle that down. Before we sign off for the night, let's take a moment to thank a selection of our awesome Tabletop Bellhop Patreon patrons. Starting with Jeff and Sheila Seuss. Thank you, Seusses. And thank you, Kat and Tori Dome. Brian Van Beek. Thank you, Brian. William Fisher. Thank you. Andrew Dacey. Thank you, Andrew. Did you just hear a double bell? Probably. I think you guys did. Yeah, there was a bell, right? I'm going to pretend I heard a double b

ell because it's time to shut the lobby doors and lock things up. Well, we can't be here 24-7. You can always find us at TabletopBellhop.com all over the web as TabletopBellhop, and on your podcatcher of choice as the Tabletop Bellhop Gaming Podcast. Now, the one thing we all love, Deanna, Sean, and I, almost as much as games, is coffee. If you enjoyed the show tonight, why not buy us a coffee over at ko-fi.com That's ko-fi.com/tabletopbellhop And you can also show your support by giving us a th

umbs up, a like, leave a comment, or just by telling your friends and fellow gamers about our show. For the Tabletop Bellhop Gaming Podcast, I am your Tabletop Bellhop, Moe Tousignant. And I am the behind-the-scenes magic that makes all of this work, Deanna. Thank you, and game on.