Review: Wacky Wheels Mystery Games: The Mysterious Case of the Dancing Mania

 Wacky Wheels Mystery Games:  The Mysterious Case of the Dancing Mania




Published in October of 2022 (we, here at The Voynich Times mysteriously grabbed an early copy), The Mysterious Case of Dancing Mania is the first issue in a new quarterly Mystery Puzzle Game magazine from Wacky Wheels in the Netherlands! It calls itself, “A mystery story puzzle game” and combines story, mystery, and..you guessed it…puzzles!
 
We here at the Voynich Times have really wanted a Mystery Puzzle Game subscription magazine for a long time, so we were so excited to have used the mystic arts to find this item! So…did it stand up to our expectations? Did we love it? Did we hang our heads in shame for failing every puzzle?  Did we use it as kindling for our fireplace?  Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  Let’s discuss the product first!



 Wacky Wheels Mystery Games was created by a group of mysterious folks whose website ends in “.nl” which we can only imagine means that they are from a country that is null?  However, with much research, it would appear that they could, in fact, be from Dutchland, but how Dutchland equals .nl, we may never know.  They create road rallies that combine mystery puzzles for an experience where you are solving your path as you go!  Now, they have decided to add a magazine format so that armchair escapists can join in the fun! 

Early 2019, the idea of Wacky Wheels was born out of a mixed passion for escape rooms and road trips by its creators Klaudia, Johan and Edwin. The stories and puzzles come from Edwin's chaotic mind, after which Klaudia makes sense of it all and makes things look in a way that other people can also appreciate it. Johan creates the whole digital landscape, so that the games can be found, bought, played, and enjoyed.

This cover is gorgeous!  Really, really, gorgeous, with popping goldish colors on a navy-blueish background with just great style. We may actually frame this cover to add to our museum!  The back cover provides just enough snippet of the story to pull you in and does an amazing job of encapsulating what they are going for, “FOLLOW THE STORY, SOLVE THE PUZZLES AND UNRAVEL THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF DANCING MANIA.”  (Voynich plea: please reconsider your obvious hatred of the Oxford comma!).

The magazine also feels really great!  It is similar to a cardstock cover with glossy interior pages in the (A4) magazine size, but–color us mystified–the paper is made from ecological paper with a lower CO2 footprint than recycled paper–according to their website.  

Disclaimer: we at the Voynich Times did not hire our own scientists and conduct decades-long scientific experiments to validate these claims…we just consulted the Eco-nomicon.

The interior paper is nicely printed with varying fonts and aged looking backgrounds designed to make each author’s documents seem unique–this is a nice touch!  Overall, the presentation is great, but they may want to keep an eye on combinations of fun fonts/backgrounds that can make reading a little challenging at times—but this is just a minor issue.  

The inside cover tells us how to play–yes, this is not an immersive product, it knows it is a game and presents itself as a game within the fictionalized story–and this helps set up the gameplay mechanic, which was slightly confusing at first, but quickly came into focus.

Step 1: QR Code to get your scorecard/hint page.  I am a HUGE fan of being able to scorecard the game as I play!  If the game is not designed to be fully immersive, then I want the game-play aspect like this offers!  One quick call-out…the app works great, it has a nice look/feel, is easy to use and really helps!

Step 2-6: Describes how to read, play, score, and share!  

The next page shows what the questions are that you will be solving for, and then the game itself begins!  At this point, with all the love and quality put into this product, we were really nervous and were rooting for this game to be good, not just pretty.  Were our hopes unfounded?  Read on…

Color-blind warning:  To solve a few puzzles you need to have full color vision..and even then the colors were a bit tough for me to see at times…so if you are color challenged, grab a friend to help.

The story of this game involves solving the mystery of a dancing plague!  Going through this game you will solve various puzzles based on the evidence put together by those who were investigating the incident.  It is then put together with a meta-puzzle to complete the game.  You will also have an opportunity to use deductive reasoning with some documents to see how closely you can figure out the events of the day, but this part is unscored, but a fun challenge for those who want an extra “detective” bit of game. I really like having the mix of puzzle/ story/ deduction, so this was a nice touch.  All but the last part are scored.  The puzzle portions of the game are scored, where your amazing prowess (or shame, in our case–we got one wrong) will be shown to the world on the leaderboard!

The puzzles were a fun mix of challenges that kept us entertained as we worked our way through the book…okay, by the royal “we” we mean me.  But, we digress…

We did totally fail on one puzzle, but that was because we did not interpret something correctly and it is on us, not the game…ooh, that one stung.  One of the  puzzles was rather frustrating at first, but gave a great “A-ha!” moment when we figured it out!  That “A-ha!” moment was the highlight of this game for us! 

The overall game took us several hours to play and made for an enjoyable time of playing…so, what was our score you may ask?  960/1000…also known as “last place” at the time of this writing.  

So, what was the bottom line, you may wonder after reading this far?  Well, let us tell you…I will be subscribing!  Yes, this game holds a nice place in the middle of the pack for toughness, a top spot for portability and offline play (although you need to check answers online), and works as a nice, casual, fun-filled puzzle game!  So, speed-type out now to https://www.wackywheels.nl/ and do yourself a favor and subscribe!






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mystery Puzzle History: The Progenitor Age: Photocrimes

Image
The 1930s--The Golden Age of Detective Fiction!    Detective stories, pulps, and crime stories were very popular in the 1930s.  Agatha Christie was the preeminent  mystery writer of the time and Sherlock Holmes was still a major influence. It was in this era that Photocrimes was created.  Photocrimes was a feature in a newspaper consisting of photographs and text.  They starred Inspector Holt, who would solve the crime that was laid out in the paper.  The reader was tasked with coming up with the solution, then comparing it to the actual solution provided by Holt, which was printed elsewhere in the paper.  Solving the crime across the panels requires paying attention to the details of the case as written and the pictures themselves, as there are clues all throughout.  The reader cannot always solve everything about the crime, since the detective puts the clues and other evidence together in the story (including certain motives the reader does...
Read more

Mystery Puzzle History: The Progenitor Age: Cipher Stories Puzzle Book

Image
Cipher Stories Puzzle Book is a collection of 25 unrelated short story puzzles that all use a similar mechanism to solve.  It was first printed on February 28, 1928, published by Lewis Copeland Co. (1)  It was written by Kenneth S. Cooper and Illustrated by Olin Wakefield.  We cannot find any other works by either man at this point, so must think this was their first and only book, or that they were pseudonyms of others at this time that may not have wanted to be associated with this genre.    The short story puzzles are also called Cipher Stories and are actual stories that reach a point where a Transposition Cipher must be solved in order to progress.  To solve the bigger puzzles, the reader must first learn the key in a mini puzzle which is based on a hint in the story itself.  Most stories have two puzzles and have clues to assist you in solving them.   The primary cipher to solve is generally set up to look like a crossword puzzle in lay...
Read more

The Original(ish) Escape Room Video Game: Crimson Room Reviewed!

Image
Crimson Room "I drank too much last night.  I thought what time it was now. I felt thirst of the throat. The bed was different from usual. Is this a hotel? No, it does not seem like a hotel. I am shut up. I have to escape."  -- opening of the Crimson Room The Crimson Room is one of the first graphical video game escape rooms and considered to be one of the most influential for the genre.  It was released 04 Mar 2004 (1) and built on Adobe Flash.  The game was developed by Toshimitsu Takagi and was inspired by the graphical game MOTAS and the games Chasm and DROOM. (2)   The music and sound effects were by Oto-Jiten (Datacraft Co., LTD.) (2)  It was also preceded in 1988 by the text adventure escape room game Behind Closed Doors .   The story is a simple escape story...I woke up in a crimson room, apparently after drinking too much and having lost some memory (possibly due to the drinking?).  The room is locked and I need to get out. The room was ...
Read more