The Case of the Curiously Correct Blueprints

Review

Game Description

“As a member of the SHhhh, We’re Reading Book Club in Hincksville, you’ve been patiently awaiting your turn to read the advance copy of the highly anticipated new Ells and Ernie mystery, when Mr. Hincks gives you some shocking news: your copy of the book is at the bottom of a vat of candy! Never fear, Mr. Hincks will save the day! (Which is only fair, seeing as he was the one that ruined the day.)

Mr. Hincks has recorded an abridged audio version of the book and put together a box of peculiar reference materials in order to recreate the story for you before the book club meeting. But there’s one problem: the first rule of book club is, NO SPOILERS! How can Mr. Hincks recap this mystery book for you without spoiling any of the twists? You’re not quite sure, but he seems to have a few puzzling tricks up his sleeves.

Can you unlock all the audio clips before the SHhhh, We’re Reading Book Club meeting? What are these mysterious markups on the reference pages?? How can a set a blueprints that are correct be curious???”

Personal Experience

I mentioned in my Endangered Rescue Galápagos Penguins review how nice it was to see a new game from Team Bluefish designers Ace and Anna Ellett and how I hoped to see more from them soon. How lucky for me then that, shortly after that review was posted, they announced a new game set in their delightfully whimsical Hincksville! It was an immediate pre-order from me.

While The Case of the Curiously Correct Blueprints continues Team Bluefish’s curious naming pattern, this is not the Curious Escalator of Mr. Hincks. Instead, The Curiously Correct Blueprints is something quite new—both from Team Bluefish and puzzle experiences in general—a hybrid of an audiobook and a puzzle game. I’ll dive more into it in the Narrative section, but it’s an interesting combination and one I really enjoyed.

The game is broken up into five parts, each of which took me approximately 30–40 minutes to complete. They also act as convenient pause points, if you need to break your playthrough over multiple sessions. The experience was an expected delight from beginning to end, leaving me eagerly anticipating Team Bluefish’s next release.

Narrative

The Curiously Correct Blueprints is Team Bluefish’s most narrative heavy game to date. The narrative aspect is so different from their previous work, that it took me until the end of the first part of the experience to really twig onto how this experience was meant to be enjoyed. Each part of The Curiously Correct Blueprints starts with an approximately ten minute audiobook narration (with a full transcript provided), I wasn’t sure what information would be needed from the narration to solve the impending puzzles, so I over-zealously took notes. It turns out that I needn’t have done that, the puzzles are inspired by the story section but otherwise are completely self-contained. The audiobook doesn’t supplement the game, rather the game supplements the audiobook. Once I realized that, I was able to lean back and just let myself enjoy the story being told.

Writing a short story audiobook and making it the core part of a puzzle game experience was a risky gamble and it pays off fabulously here. The story, which is presented as effectively a Cliffs HincksNotes version of a mystery novel, is well-written, well-narrated, and enjoyable from start to finish. The clues to the mystery are peppered in well, allowing for a well-earned reveal at the end of the story, without being too obvious. I really enjoyed listening to a mystery set in the whimsical, eccentric world of Hincksville. That is to say, there’s plenty of references to sprouts, absurdist architecture, and overly-specific television shows; but no dead bodies to be found. If the Elletts decided to write a full-length mystery novel in this world, I’d be the first to buy it.

The components of the game are made from high quality paper and are recyclable when finished—always a nice touch. The experience also comes with a pencil-shaped pen which is a fun souvenir of the experience.

Puzzle Play

There are effectively two puzzle games included here. There’s first is the narrative mystery that the characters of the story are trying to solve and that you as the listener can try to solve along with them, ala a Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, or Thursday Murder Club book. The second set is the puzzles that Mr. Hincks gives you, in order to hear more of story. As mentioned above, I think the narrative mystery was really well done, so I’ll be focusing on the more traditional game portion in this section.

Team Bluefish has a signature style to their puzzles that this experience utilizes well. Each puzzle break from the story feels a lot like solving an issue of the Hincks Gazette: you’re presented with a collection of puzzles, you need to work out which order to solve them in, each puzzle solved then gives you a vital piece of information on how to solve the next puzzle, and the final puzzle solves to the phrase needed to unlock the next section of the book. It’s a very satisfying game loop and one that they have honed to perfection. I’m impressed that after three games and twenty-four gazette issues that they continue to find clever new ways to create fresh puzzles while keeping that familiar and fun Hincks feel.

The difficulty for the puzzles ranged from somewhat easy to medium difficulty, with a pretty satisfying difficulty progression as the story went on. Getting a nice difficulty curve like that is a deceptively tough thing to do and Team Bluefish does a consistently excellent job of pulling it off.

There were no puzzles that required distinguishing between colors, the experience is completely friendly to colorblind players. While the story is delivered as an audiobook, there are no audio-based puzzle components, and transcripts are provided for every piece of audio. For teams that get stuck, there’s a well-designed hints section readily available for each section of the experience that you play through.

Recommendation

Team Bluefish is back and it’s a delight to be able to romp around in Hincksville once more. Most excitingly, it doesn’t look like we’ll have to wait as long for a new experience from them, as the launch page for The Curiously Correct Blueprints features a “Coming Soon” picture for The Case of the Curiously “SECRET BOOK TITLE”. After the fun I had here, I’m very much looking forward to playing whatever Curious Case they come up with next.

Overall this game gets my highest recommendation. It was a delight to revisit the charming city limits of Hincksville and will be for anybody that’s a fan of the previous games, Detective Fiction, whimsical worlds, and/or excellent puzzles.

To players who haven’t played any of Team Bluefish’s previous experiences, I’d recommend playing The Curious Elevator of Mr. Hincks or an issue or two of The Hincks Gazette first. While this experience is definitely excellent on its own, I feel like it is even more enjoyable if you have already experienced the wider Hincksville world.