The Detective Society, publishers of well-received mystery games such as Murder on the Moon with a BGG rating of 8.1 and The Disappearance of Claire Makova, BGG rating 7.6, has launched a Kickstarter for Disaster on Dino Island.
Like their previous material, this is a puzzle-based cooperative game: ‘The head scientist on Dino Island has gone missing, leaving the entire fate of the park hanging by a thread. Can you find out what happened to her before it’s too late?’ Your team of one to four players will work through a whole pile of interlocked puzzles (‘over 30’), and not just using the paper and card—maps, letters and other documents—contained within the box; there are websites to visit for clues, character chatbots to interact with, and emails to ‘hack.’ Game time is an estimated three to five hours, but it’s split into three episodes everything doesn’t have to be completed in one sitting. The ‘deluxe’ Kickstarter pledge nets you an additional hour-long preview episode. On the topic of pledge levels, if you pay megabucks, you get to name a dinosaur or even feature as a ‘prominent (non-evil) character’—I wonder if a later addition to the Kickstarter rewards is the opportunity to be an evil character!
If the game involved no more than detective work, there’d be little to distinguish it from other ‘escape room in your home’ (as The Detective Society says) games, but the big addition here is—no surprise given the game’s name—dinosaurs. They’re initially safely contained in their enclosures, but what happens if they escape…? And even if you manage to avoid that, investigating an enclosure is not going to be hazard free. As this is a game intended to give you surprises and intriguing puzzles, the publisher has to remain fairly tight-lipped about what’s in the game; however, as mentioned, previous games have been well-received, and you can get clues about what it’s like to play from reviews of those—or you can try a mini demo available at https://dinoisland.org/pterrordactyl-splash/ (of course, this is digital only, so not completely representative of the final game).
One nice feature of the game is that accessibility has been taken into account: transcripts are available for audio, and audio descriptions are provided for other material—though it must be noted that the demo mentioned above doesn’t have a full transcript for one of the puzzles.
It’s not stated on the Kickstarter page, but if this game is like its predecessors, you will end up damaging components as you play it (whether this involves cutting or folding papers or opening envelopes), making it difficult to pass the game on to other potential players once you’re done, unless you’re very careful. The cost does seem quite high for a play-once game, but The Detective Society states in their FAQ: ‘Our games cost less than a trip to a good escape room, a theatre ticket or a night out with friends.’ I guess that’s a valid way to think about it. Talking about prices, a pain point with most Kickstarters is the addition of taxes (VAT and sometimes import duty) and postage to prices on the site—the publisher’s British so for once we’re on the winning side here!
About the Author:
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
