Game Review: Holiday Hijinks Master Detective Collection Part I

Holiday Hijinks Master Detective Collection published by Grand Gamers Guild and designed by Jonathan Chaffer

The Holiday Hijinks Collection gathers a dozen 18-card escape room games designed over the past several years by Jonathan Chaffer. Each game comes in a small tuck box and contains a mystery centered on a holiday theme. The games use a website to confirm correct solutions and provide hints if players find a puzzle too difficult. The website also provides some codes and other information that might be used in the puzzles (like Morse Code or ASCII, things like that). The designs are compact and meant to take an hour or so for one or more players to solve.

The Kringle Caper (2020)

Christmas morning starts with an invitation from Santa to come to the North Pole to help investigate a crime! Though the crime is not immediately obvious, you follow clues and solve puzzles involving the Christmas theme, using popular songs and Santa's workshop to discover the culprit.

The mystery is fun even if the solution does not quite make sense. Not every card had a puzzle on it, some just provided more clues or information to make other solutions. Like other escape room games, some clues are scattered about, showing up before they are needed, though it was always clear what was relevant to the current puzzle. We enjoyed solving this one.

The Independence Incident (2021)

Visiting a museum for Fourth of July, players are drawn into a mystery trying to defeat the Culper Ring, a group bent on hiding secrets from the rest of America. Players examine a lot of museum exhibits for anomalies to solve problems and get to the next stage of the conspiracy.

The storyline is interesting and the puzzles are fun. Each puzzle is built around some aspect of American history or politics, making it a fun little civics review in addition to the creative puzzle-solving. This was easier and more enjoyable than the first one. 

The Pumpkin Problem (2021)

The most horrible Halloween discovery ever--someone has substituted the contents of candy bar wrappers with raw vegetables!!! To find the culprit (and the hidden stash of authentic candy), players have to hunt down the trick-or-treaters and get information from them about the suspicious house on the street, solving other puzzles along the way.

This had a nice variety of puzzles and used the fronts of the cards in creative ways. We only had two challenging puzzles that needed hints (or the bonus information on the web site). The whole thing was very satisfactory and took less than an hour. Nice design job (except for the genuinely horrifying theme)!

The Cupid Crisis (2022)

You have an awesome Valentine's Day date planned at a fancy restaurant. The restaurant also has an awesome plan. You show up early and get locked in by yourself. The door has a keypad lock to get out, but you'll have to go through a lot of puzzles to find the right combination.

This was the most satisfying yet. The puzzles are thematically tied to Valentine's Day and to fancy restaurant stuff (like the reservation book, menus, dance floors, etc.). We only needed hints once or twice and relied on the sets of codes a few times. The humor is good and the creativity of using the cards is very enjoyable. We also liked that we could solve puzzles in different orders since we didn't immediately get what some of them were going for.

The Birthday Burglary (2022)

A birthday party for you is a bit spoiled by the fact that no one is there. A bunch of stuff has been left around, including presents and party games. As you look through all the stuff, you slowly uncover the secret that is waiting for you not too far away.

Players have to interact a lot more with the website. Found items become tools to use with other items or devices. For example, there's a cotton candy machine that needs a little maintenance before you can get yourself some flossy goodness. One object will fix the machine, another will let you get cotton candy from the machine. But don't try the lollipop, because it's too short and that would be too much sugar (or so the website said when we tried it). The puzzles are fairly intuitive and move along at a good pace. We were stumped by one because we made a wrong assumption on how to solve it. Other than that, it was a fine time.

The Groundhog Gambit (2022)

You are trapped in an inventor's mansion where the code pad to open the front door is locked, alarmed, and frozen over. As you explore the inventor's home you solve various puzzles that all lead back to the front door. Again, and again, and again. Just like that movie where Bill Murray has to relive the same day over and over and over.

The game goes through a lot of loops varying the puzzles as it goes. At first, the set-up was frustrating for us. Then we got into the rhythm of the repeats and things felt like they were moving faster. About half-way through we got the option to take a break and come back later, not realizing this was a double-length mystery. The box says 120 minutes and highest difficulty but we didn't look at that till afterward. With so many puzzles, we did use some hints, especially when we reiterated through one that needed a hint on the previous run. 

In retrospect, the design is very clever, using the same elements with one or two shifts to force the players to find different answers. The intricacy and variety were amazing, especially toward the end when we were able to use solutions to puzzles that didn't work earlier. Ultimately, this was a very satisfying experience.

So far, the last one has been the best one. More reviews in the future as we work our way through the back half of the box!