Unleash Your Inner Sherlock with ‘The Detective Society’ (Review)

Solve the case of a missing socialite without leaving your living room

In an age of mass communication, we are constantly accessible. Whether by phone, email, text, in case of emergency, we are all instantly reachable 24/7. It is far less common however, to receive such notice through the mail. Most of the postal mail I receive is junk mail and bills. So imagine my surprise to get a box of evidence in a missing person case delivered to my apartment…

Claire Makova, wealthy socialite, philanthropist, and founder of Save the Kittens (a volunteer group who go out onto the streets of Molvaria to save stray cats and find them good, loving homes in the UK) has gone missing.

And it is up to us to find her.

This is of the utmost urgency.

And you can do it from your couch, thanks to The Detective Society.

The Detective Society is a series of detective puzzles shipped to your home. After an incredibly successful Kickstarter launch in April of this year, the company is now shipping boxes on a more or less monthly schedule. And anyone can join in at any time at their own pace. Participants have the option to either purchase an individual, self-contained episode, or to subscribe for the full six-part season about the disappearance of Claire Makova.

Lucky for me, I got my hands on the first “episode” or box of season one and am keen to find what became of Ms. Makova. The experience is based off the conceit that I, an amateur member of the Detective Society, have been contacted by the security firm Dolosus Global to assist in the finding of the aforementioned missing person, Claire Makova, having been recommended as one of the top amateur sleuths. However, Dolosus wants to be sure that I am up to the task, and so before giving me access to the case files, I have to successfully study some historical cases first. And, so, by going through the three brown envelopes, marked X, Y and Z, I may just find the code that will allow me to take the case in the first place.

The issue for me was that this opening set of puzzles, while clever and well-produced, felt particularly “math-heavy and given the “need to prove myself” to be allowed to continue the investigation, it all came across as, well, feeling like homework. Fun homework set by the young cool math teacher at school, but, homework, nonetheless the amount of effort involved almost put my partner-in-(solving)-crime off the whole experience.

Once getting through these puzzles, however, access to the case files are granted, and this is where The Detective Society shines. Suddenly, a whole storyworld of intrigue and incriminating documents is opened up to the players. Photographs which need to be studied, a map of London which has to be perused, and a whole host of web sites that cry out to be scrutinized. Leonid Makova, the father of Claire, who also happens to be the Ambassador for the Republic of Molvaria to the UK, is desperately in need of our help to find his missing daughter at any cost, and is awaiting news from us as soon as possible.

Participants can send their answers to various puzzles to an in-game email address. We send a note to the email provided, and, shortly after receive a reply egging us on and pointing us in the direction of the next clue to decipher. It’s a delight having immediate responses to emails (or other forms of communication…) during the game, which helps to maintain the sense of urgency and the rush of finding answers.

The quality of all the materials provided by The Detective Society is top notch, both the physical ones that have been shipped to us, and all of the electronic ones that have been created in support of the game. And for those who take the time to go through every page of the various web sites, reading all the fine print and looking at photo captions, there is a wealth of dry humor hiding in plain sight, which this Sherlock-wannabe appreciated greatly.

For those that need help, The Detective Society has provided a support network of hints. They actively respond to players in their Reddit discussion thread, as well as monitoring a private Facebook group for would be sleuths, and also provide a tiered list of official clues from the in-house (and in-world) expert Lucid Montgomery. While we didn’t find that we needed the “official” hints during our playthrough, it is good to know that help is only a click away. And it may also be gratifying to go through afterwards to show that yes, you really did know what you were doing.

My wife and I had a wonderful evening playing through episode one, a much welcomed break from our usual doomscrolling. Our living room floor became a mess of papers and scribbles, and I was certainly glad to be married to a woman who is far more organized than I am. None of the puzzles were completely unsolvable by us, but some of the challenges did take a little time and thought to work through and get the old gray matter moving. Overall, we managed to work through the content of the episode one box in about 90 minutes. Although you could spread out the puzzles over the course of several evenings, to help stretch out the experience, for us, we found that the puzzles were so interestingly and intriguingly tied into each other that we simply could not stop once we got started.

There is no limit to the number of sleuths to be taking part at once, and a single solver could do the whole episode, there is always more fun in taking part of these kinds of experiences with others. As each episode is self-contained, there is also no need to hold onto pieces until the next episode, apart from satisfaction and treasure keeping. To have the sensation and thrill of an escape room in your own home is wonderful, particularly in these times, and knowing that there are other families around the world who are enjoying getting stuck into this crime caper is a great feeling.

Without giving anything away, the end of episode one is strong, and leads directly into the next part of the series. For me, I only wish we had the next one ready to dive into straight away!

Individual episodes of The Detective Society are available for £30 with an option to purchase the entire six-box season for £144. Monthly memberships to upcoming boxes are also availble. UK shipping is included; shipping to other parts of the world is calculated at checkout.

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