Emerald Echoes

• Designer: Rita Orlov, Chelsea Stark, Lauren Bello
• Publisher: PostCurious
• Players: 1+
• Age: 14+
• Time: 4 or more hours
• Allplay link: https://www.allplay.com/board-games/emerald-echoes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Emerald Echoes is a narrative puzzle adventure featuring beautifully-illustrated puzzles and tactile artifacts. Through the eyes of a historical researcher, players uncover the story of a legendary alchemist and her companions. Told over four chapters, Emerald Echoes is a standalone sequel to The Emerald Flame.

The Emerald Flame concludes with a dramatic fissure between an alchemist, Marketa, and her close friend and confidante, Hannah. Hannah then furiously sends Marketa out of Prague, and many years go by with no contact between the two. Over time, Hannah comes to regret her actions, and now seeks to mend the rift in their relationship. Marketa, however, proves difficult to find, and the path to reconciliation is paved with unexpected challenges. This is where our story begins… 

But it’s not the whole story. The other part is happening in the margins—through the messages between two researchers. Brought together by their shared interest in these recently unearthed historical documents, the two begin to correspond. Navigate the artifacts with their communication by your side and uncover what happened to Hannah and Marketa. 

Within each chapter, there is a collection of unlabeled items, along with a series of green puzzle folders labeled numerically in the order they should be solved (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and so on). There are thirteen puzzle folders in total. There are also some blue folders that do not contain any puzzles but should be opened as part of the same numerical sequence to reveal more pieces of the story.

Each green folder contains at least one written document to investigate — this should be used as a jumping off point as you piece together which items are needed to solve the puzzle. Within each puzzle folder is also a pocket with a card labeled “Analysis,” featuring incremental hints, as well as the solution, for each puzzle.

As with most reviews in the genre, we will avoid spoilers.  Of course, as a corollary, this also means that we won’t be doing any in-depth review of any of the puzzles because there’s no way to talk about the awesomeness of the puzzles without spoiling them for you.

We started on a cloudy Saturday afternoon around 1pm.  We assembled four of the Opinionated Gamers around a kitchen table and started with the “Start Here” pamphlet.  We’ve all done previous Post Curious games, so we were familiar with the format – specifically that the needed answers would always be an English language word or phrase.  We had a supply of paper for note taking and whatnot, and we grabbed the Feb 1 Envelope and folder 10 as directed.

As with previous Post Curious games, I love the fact that everything is included in the box.  No internet access nor research is required.  There aren’t any videos or websites that you have to go do – instead you have the physical letters and other things to examine.  If you need a hint, that’s also provided for you on the Analysis cards!

That being said, you can go online to check your answers or to get transcripts of the written materials.  Though we didn’t need it for this game as we’re all native English speakers, this could be very useful for someone who needs to be able to use AI to translate the messages to a different language.

As I can’t really talk much about the puzzles without spoiling them, I did at least make notes of how we progressed during the afternoon.

• 110p – start, envelope 1.0 – lots of reading to set up the story
• 131 – finished 1.1, 1.2
• 140 – Just found out that we solved a puzzle out of order. The online answer checker takes any right answer and tells you which puzzle you solved. This is always going to be something that will be at risk when you get all the ‘bits’ for a group of puzzles when you open the envelope…
• 202p – 1.3 and 1.4 done. Great puzzles. Almost needed a hint but figured it out after a lot of group discussion and thinking.
• 215p finished envelope 1. No hints needed. 
• 231p 2.2 down, really enjoyed this puzzle. 

• 250-335.  Man. First puzzle where we got a bit stuck. After half an hour of trying to work it out, We needed a hint to figure out where we were stuck on this one. The included hint system works really well, you just pull up on the hint card and read as much as you need. If you get really stuck, the final answer is simply at the end of the conversation. I felt it was fair, but two of the four in my group have issues with why we got stuck.  
• 348pm – Back on track. Opening the third envelope.  The blue envelopes have a fair amount of reading but the story is advanced in those letters and chats. Our hardest task is to keep everyone else from fussing with the puzzle pieces that fall out of the envelope rather than listening to the story. We’re trying to not solve puzzles in advance of the reading as without some of the clues/hints/direction from the text, we’re just spinning our wheels.
• 411pm. It’s a short envelope and now we’re opening the gargantuan fourth and final envelope. Interestingly, there’s only one puzzle in the last chapter. But ooh there’s a cool wooden box inside accounting for the thickness 
• 427pm. Done! Great story and a fulfilling conclusion. All four of us enjoyed this and it was a wonderful way to spend a rainy afternoon inside with friends.  The last two envelopes really could have been a single one, though I understand why it is separated into two.  For future planning, I’d probably recommend that players set aside time for three sessions.  Envelopes 3 and 4 have about the same amount of content as each of the first two.

Total of 3 hours and 27 minutes for this puzzle tale. 

Overall, I found this to be a really pleasing experience.  I love the all-physical nature of the components, and all of the documents, letters, boxes, etc. are really well done.  The only downside of the components is that it’s hard to share them with four people at once. If needed, we did take advantage of our phone cameras and would snap pictures as needed so that multiple people could look at them at once.  Admittedly, given my aging eyes, it was always nice to be able to zoom in on the image as well.

From a cost-benefit perspective, this is a great value.   The pre-order price is $75  ( https://www.allplay.com/board-games/emerald-echoes ) – and given the current cost of going to the movies, and the fact that this box kept four of us entertained all afternoon, it certainly compares well to that.  To boot, you can reset the game and pass it along to someone else – that is definitely another nice part of Emerald Echoes.

The puzzles are well constructed as with most every Post Curious puzzle that we’ve tried. In this particular box, we only had one puzzle that we had “issues” with – and again, in retrospect, I felt like the puzzle was fair (we just misinterpreted a comment from the text which led us down the wrong path for a bit).  But, out of a total of 13 puzzles – this is a really good ratio.

We did choose to use the online answer checker as opposed to the Analysis cards – mostly because we didn’t want to spoil any answers in case we were wrong on our initial guess.  When you use the website, it tells you if you are right or wrong, and confirms which puzzle you have solved.  My notes aren’t great, but I think that we had three wrong guesses along the way (two of which were for WAGs) so it was nice to simply be told that we were wrong and that we were able to still have the chance to continue working on the puzzle.

For those who have played the first game in this series, I’d guess that this one was a touch easier than Emerald Flame.  Of course, this is just a guess as it’s been a few years since we did Emerald Flame (with the same group IIRC) – but all of us recalled that the puzzles were a bit harder in Emerald Flame… Or maybe we just weren’t as good at puzzles back then!  That being said, the overall complexity was really nice, and in the one occasion where we needed hints, the included hint system steered us back onto the right path nicely.

All four of us had a great time, and if this was something that was “keepable”, it would certainly have a permanent place in my game collection.  As it stands, it’s all packed up nicely – though I’ll have to source a few pieces of tracing paper to fully reset the game.  I’ve already talked the game up enough that I have at least one local friend and one distant friend who want to try it – so maybe it ends up being lent out to those friends.

Emerald Echoes is a great puzzle experience, and it only makes me want to try some of their other games which I haven’t yet tried.  There is a series called the Ministry of Lost Things which  I haven’t yet explored (two episodes so far), as well as a super interesting book that has just gone through Kickstarter called The Stormlamp Rituals – “The Stormlamp Rituals, Volume I is a beautiful puzzle book created by Jack Fallows, co-author and illustrator of The Light in the Mist. Travel along with Anna, a young witch exploring a mysterious world touched by magic. Read the story, examine illustrations, and solve puzzles page-by-page to progress further in the adventure. The Stormlamp Rituals is a compilation of the episodic series previously titled Cryptogram Puzzle Post. It also includes additional puzzle and story materials, as well as hints and solutions, for a fully-offline immersive experience.”

I’m pretty excited by the fact that they have already labeled this book as “Volume I”…

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale Y
• I like it. John P
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

Allplay link: https://www.allplay.com/board-games/emerald-echoes