A Greek Life – A puzzle poster

• By Argyx Games
• Currently on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/argyxgames/mystery-poster-1-a-greek-life?ref=bxn4ht

A narrative puzzle game on a poster

So, we’ve done a few of the puzzle games from Argyx in the past, and we have found them to be interesting and quite challenging. The puzzles included in the previous games were quite inventive and had difficult solutions.

The description I got from the publisher…
MYSTERY POSTER #1: A GREEK LIFE
Look carefully at the 40 or so objects and documents represented on the poster collage to solve 13 riddles in order to unfold the story of Jules Daumier, your great-grandfather.

What you get in the envelope (well, at least what I got), is a single glossy poster – a large poster, about the size of 8 sheets of paper.  There are no instructions at all, though there is a QR code in the corner that you can scan.  Looking online; you get a bit more of the story:

“After entering the former office of your great-grandfather, Jules Daumier, your eyes gradually get used to the semi-darkness. The room, arranged on the ground floor of the house, is overloaded with heterogeneous objects, making it look like a flea market or a cabinet of curiosities. Most of them are linked to Greece, but also to the passions and hobbies of their owner: photography, music and art in general. The office contains a few rare collectibles amidst inexpensive trinkets and more intimate memorabilia. All objects are fragments of a busy life. Your father designed a puzzle consisting of connecting them to bring them to life again and make you discover the life of your ancestor …”

The poster has thirteen different puzzles on it, though it’s up to you to figure out which parts of the poster go with which puzzle… The puzzle solutions will be used to fill in the blanks in hte story of Jules’ life.  When you start to play the game, you go to a webpage where you can fill in the solutions.  If you are correct, the red X next to the space turns into a green checkmark.

There is no time limit to solving these puzzles (and trust me, some of these are pretty difficult and may take you some time to solve) – and you can do them in any order.  If you get stuck, there is a hint page where you can get clues to the different puzzles, and you also then get a glimpse at how difficult each puzzle is rated to be.  I solved these puzzles over the course of a work-week.  I put the poster on the side of my desk, and I just worked on things in my downtime.   

There are lots of different types of puzzles, and I particularly enjoyed the way that I had to synthsize information from various parts of the poster to come up with the solution.  Some of these puzzle games give you puzzles on discrete pieces of paper, but here you almost get this extra puzzle of figuring out where to look on this giant poster to find the information you need (and semi spoiler… most puzzles are not found all together on the poster, you’ll have to pick out the info that you need!).  

Make sure you have your phone or computer on.  The rules tell you explicitly that you will have to go online for some information to solve some of the puzzles.  

The puzzles were fairly difficult (in line with the other Argyx games that we have played) though none was felt to be unfair.  I did need clues on two of the more difficult ones, but maybe if I had not tried to split up my concentration on the puzzles and do them in one sitting, I might have been a bit better at the solving.  I would think that this would take 2-3 hours of uninterrupted solving – or in other words, this would provide great entertainment for an evening.

In any event, I did enjoy my experience with the poster, and seeing as this is listed as Mystery Poster #1, I am looking forward to new releases in this series.

This poster is currently running on Kickstarter through 8 July – https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/argyxgames/mystery-poster-1-a-greek-life

Rating from the Opinionated Gamers: I like it.