• The Balthazar Stone
• Publisher: The Mystery Agency
• Players: 1-6 (we played with 4)
• Age: 12+
• Time: 1-2 hours; we solved in 54 min with 2 people
• Played with complimentary review copy provided by publisher
• Website: https://themysteryagency.com/product/the-balthazar-stone/

Can you unlock the ancient chest, find the Balthazar Stone and break the ancient curse?

The Balthazar Stone by The Mystery Agency is an award-winning escape-room puzzle to play at home. Join Elsa Winslow on her journey to Sharktooth Island. To solve the mystery, you must solve the many clues hidden in an ancient treasure chest to find Balthazar’s Stone and break its ancient curse.  It is Winner of the Best at-home Puzzle Game by Armchair Escapist 2021.

And it hasn’t been made easy for you – the wooden chest itself has been padlocked and you will have to work out the combination just to get started! You will need to use all your powers of deduction and logic to solve a baffling, mind mangling sequence of clues to crack combination locks, piece together the information to discover the truth about the stone.  

To solve The Balthazar Stone you’ll need to launch an investigation across the pieces of evidence supplied in the box as well as discover secret websites that are hiding important clues.  Over 25 authentic items have been beautifully designed with extraordinary attention to detail 

The Balthazar Stone is utterly compelling and thanks to the stunning tactile pieces, you will rapidly find yourself immersed into the case. It takes approximately 60 to minutes to solve – but could last a lot longer! If you get stuck, there are tiered hints available online to help you. 

Play alone or make it the perfect reason to invite friends around for a themed mystery party. Best of all, when you’ve solved The Balthazar Stone you can repack it to share with someone else and challenge them to beat your time!

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For me, this is the second of the puzzle games from the talented people at The Mystery Agency.  The folks behind the games are theater veterans.  Henry Lewis is one of the writers behind my all time favorite play, The Play That Goes Wrong, a show I have seen multiple times in person as well as a video recording that I wish I could still find online.  Yeah, I know this has nothing to do with his puzzle writing abilities; but someone who can show that amount of genius surely can provide great entertainment in other media, right?  As I read the further biographies, one of the other members of the team was also the producer for SIX, a musical that I recently enjoyed both off Broadway as well as on a cruise ship….  Anyways, just evidence that these are super talented people here with so much creativity at their disposal.

In the Mystery Agency games, you get a superbly crafted set of materials to solve a case.  Here, there is a sturdy locked case that you have to figure out how to open to then get to all the goodies on the inside!

As you unwrap everything, you’ll see instructions on the lid of the box which guide you to a website.  You will definitely need Internet access to play this game because the website serves as your moderator and ther may be other things you’ll need to encounter on the Web.  The solving page will keep your solving time on the webpage, and it will also provide you the place to input your answers to progress along the mystery.

  I will tell you to pay very close attention to the font when you put in the password to get started on this one.  I’m not sure why this step needs to be so tricky, but maybe they’re trying to get one more “puzzle” in the box.  If you can’t get it right, look online for the FAQ and it’ll help you here…. 

When we solved our first Mystery Agency game (The Man from Sector Six), we used a laptop.  Tonight, we solved The Balthazar Stone with just our cellphones, and everything worked just fine with the smaller screen.

If you get stuck, there is also a nice set of tiered hints to help you along.  We did not require any hints while we played, but we did look at them afterwards and they should help you along in steps, leaving you much of the puzzle to work out on your own.  And, of course, should you get completely stuck, you can get the answer for any puzzle to continue through.

The quality of the puzzles is good.  For a mass market audience, this is likely spot on the nose as far as difficulty goes.  There are a number of different styles of puzzles in this box, though nothing was novel to me and my partner.  For those who don’t have as much experience, it should be a nice combination of challenges provided in the box.

As with the other Mystery Agency game that I played, it merits mention that this is a very linear puzzle hunt.  For the most part, you are working on a single puzzle, and you cannot progress further until you have solved that puzzle.  If you have too many people in the group, there might not be enough work to go around – you can only have so many eyes/hands on a particular prop.  Having done a few of these Mystery Agency boxes, the sweet spot for me is probably 2 or 3 people.  That being said, other groups I know have used 5 and 6 people to solve a Mystery Agency game, and they felt it was the right number.

There were around 15 different things to solve in this box.  As with many puzzle hunts, some puzzles were solved nearly instantly upon sight while others took a bit of time to work through.   Everything you need is provided in the box and on the webpage…    The computer interface is fairly well done, and it helps keep things moving.  You’ll need a password to get into the site, but the information you need is found on the inside of the box.  Be warned that you need to stay on the same webpage during your entire solve as the clock is kept on it.

The quality of the physical materials is amongst the best that I’ve come across.  Having actual things to read/feel/manipulate really elevates the experience.  For the price, I was definitely pleased at how nice everything was.  There are a lot of different items found in the box, and all were of high quality.  As an added bonus, nothing is destroyed, and you are given instructions on how to repack the game so that another group can enjoy it after you’re done.

There appear to be at least five adventures from The Mystery Agency, and I’m definitely interested in trying out other episodes – lucky for me, I still have one more here to play!  Just have to find the time and the right group; but I’ll definitely be trying to get the third episode on the table soon.

In a genre which is becoming exceedingly crowded, The Mystery Agency stands out from the bunch with strong puzzles and high quality components.   While it appears that the folks behind the game got their start in theatre; they definitely have the ability to make great puzzle games too!

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor