Geek Gifts: Mystery Unfolds Puzzle Cards
It’s almost Christmas, and if you’re on my site it’s because you are geek or geek adjacent. You already know that there’s an inherent risk in buying gifts for geeks…because they’ve already completed the full set of what they’re into. Or maybe they’ve got so many video games or Batman graphic novels that you don’t know what they already have. You could go with the fall-back option of a Funko Pop Vinyl of something nerdy, but those things have never been good. Everyone just pretended to like them, of this I’m convinced.
That leads us to a gift recommendation for you all: Puzzle Cards. This all started at a local convention where we were enjoying playing indie games, combatting with the LARPers and buying hand-made arts. One booth that stood out was the Mystery Unfolds guys, showing their collection of Puzzle Cards. We had a chat, I attempted a puzzle and left my contact details to find out more about the product. These savvy folks reached out to us and offered a batch of Puzzle Cards for review purposes. (This is my disclaimer that I was sent these for a review, btw.) Well, they sent a parcel that got swallowed by Australia Post and never arrived, but then they sent another through registered post and THEN I started a review.
Ok, not straight away. First I had to solve these cards. I’m a big fan of puzzle stories and escape rooms so I figured there’s only so much that a single greeting card can include. I mean, they’re basically one picture with a bunch of hidden clues to find and unravel. Can’t be difficult.
It’s been a couple of weeks and I’ve solved MOST of them. So…pretty clever I guess.
We’re impressed with how much detail and how many layers there are in these cards. There’s a range of difficulty, with the easiest – ‘Squid’s Game – being a very kid friendly puzzle that involves colouring in certain parts of the image to create a new picture. The challenging ones, however, are no joke. It took us a long time to catch hold of a thread that let us work through the clues. Whenever we did get stuck to the point of frustration, we did dip into the solution website that lays everything out step-by-step. We like this approach to solutions, that you can get a hint for that specific step without having the whole thing spoiled. If you’ve got a bunch of nerd friends and family, you’ll get a juicy enough challenge with the hardest offerings and they’re very satisfying to solve.
The first one we cracked open was movie themed, and primarily being a cinefile I felt confident going in. Having a weirdly encyclopaedic knowledge of 90s cinema was a good help, but decoding the hidden messages and duel meanings on clues was more useful. These specifically themed cards were our favourite, having a retro video store or pirate map to decode gave us something extra to enjoy than the abstract ones, but we know plenty of people who prefer a word puzzle to a cypher.
As to what you’re getting when you pay for a Puzzle Card – you get a high quality and thickly printed card featuring hand-drawn art and a simple set of instructions. It can be used as a gift unto itself if the recipient is a puzzle fan, or a fun way to package up a gift card if you’re like me and don’t like handing over a voucher by itself. We’ve checked out the website, and there’s a strong push for creating a sustainable product, which is funky, and you’ve got the option of buying a digital card if you want to take out the physical aspect all up.
This certainly marks a first. I’ve never reviewed a greeting card before. Big shout out to Mystery Unfolds for getting this project off the ground. We going to recommend that you check out the MYSTERY UNFOLDS website and grab some stocking stuffers so they can expand the business and make more puzzles for me to work on. I’ve only got two more to solve, then I need more puzzles.
