Designed by Terry Pettigrew-Rolapp and Tommy Wallach from Hatch Escapes, and published by Arcane Wonders, Mother of Frankenstein is an 'escape room in a box'-style puzzle game. And it's a puzzle game in multiple senses of the word. In this first volume, the puzzles you solve will give you the solutions for how to correctly assemble the concentric code rings made up of styroform pieces that jigsaw together. The planned second volume will include a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle and volume 3 is due to incorporate a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.
The premise of Mother of Frankenstein is that Mary Shelley (author of the Frankenstein story) has set a number of puzzles for her son, the solutions for which will enable him to unlock secrets about her famous creation. When you open up the Volume 1 box, you'll find, in addition to the styroform pieces, three large envelopes, each marked for their theme: astronomy, music, poetry. We won't give away any spoilers but the contents of each envelope contain various documents that you'll use to solve the puzzle. It's a system that will be familiar to anyone who has played, for example, any of the games in Space Cowboys' Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective series.
To avoid spoilers we won't go into more specific detail about the puzzles; suffice to say tho' that they are challenging. If you get stuck, hints are available and an envelope contains the solutions if you give up completely or, more likely, if you just want to check to confirm your solutions are correct.
Mother of Frankenstein is notionally a game for 1-6 players. You can certainly play it solo but it's best with two or three players who can debate, argue and share their reasoning. There's a good 6-8 hours deduction time in the box, and members of the Board's Eye View team have especially enjoyed the fact that the puzzle is also an unfolding story... Volume 1 is of course a self-contained puzzle game but it's left us eager to play Volumes 2 and 3...
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