The Puzzle Box: Der Hutmacher

The second Puzzle Box we tried was Wonderland themed, and unlike the first was intended to be tackled by a small group. The premise is that you’re helping the Mad Hatter, and delightfully the box is presented in the form of an exceptionally large hat. Elegant and colourful, and quite tactile, it’s immediately arresting and makes you want to work out the secrets of its various locked compartments.

The very first puzzle might be a bit of a barrier to some groups, although in truth it’s a lot less of a barrier than it might appear. This is a linear game where the puzzles can only be solved in the intended order, and each step is introduced by a message from the Hatter (in German when we played, with translations supplied).

What stood out, apart from the attractiveness of the presentation, was the degree to which it manages to include quite physical and hands-on puzzles, much more than I’d have expected from a game in this format.

There are a great many box escape games available to buy these days, some of them really quite sophisticated. But a rental game like this can of course reach far higher standards of presentation, polish and technology than a retail box game, and that was on full display here – as a puzzle solving experience I thought it compared favourably to a lot of physical games, and was clearly at the higher end of what’s available as a tabletop experience.