Society of Curiosities: Mysterious Map Heist

By | June 13, 2020
0 Comment

by Society of Curiosities (website)

1985 Rue St Philippe, Trois-Rivières, QC G9A 4V6

1-4 players

£10.00 $12.00

Languages: EN

🖥digital
30-90 mins
Solve the case of the mysterious map heist! You can start your mission right away! This game can be played completely online.
show full description
Something wrong or out of date?
Thank you for helping keep Escape the Review up to date!
Let us know what needs changing:




If you own or manage this company, you can also claim the listing and update it yourself

Overall rating

Rated between 3 and 4.5 out of 5

based on ratings from 11 users
combined with 6 pro reviews

Your review

Player reviews

Lotsa Locks experienced rated this:Rated between 4.5 and 4.5 out of 5
Played: 6 Oct 2022 Team size: 2 Outcome: Successful escape!
cleverimmersivestory-driven

A great free introduction to the Society, there are lots of research tasks and custom websites needing to be interacted with. The finale directly leads to the first episode in the subscription (The Hunt for Captain Madok's Treasure) so it's great to set the scene and you receive the things in the post that you digitally liberated, which helps immerse you in the world.

EireBanshee expert rated this:Rated between 3 and 3 out of 5
Played: 6 Mar 2022 Team size: 2 Time taken: 20 Outcome: Successful escape!

It was pleasant enough while it lasted, but you don't get much game for your money.  We were stunned when the game was apparently finished, around 20 minutes with no grand finale.  

jakea256 expert rated this:Rated between 4 and 4 out of 5
Anonymous rated this:Rated between 3.5 and 3.5 out of 5
Anonymous rated this:Rated between 5 and 5 out of 5
lareve expert rated this:Rated between 5 and 5 out of 5
Played: 27 Jun 2020 Team size: 3 Time taken: 0:30 Outcome: Successful escape!
Anonymous rated this:Rated between 4 and 4 out of 5
Played: July 2020 Team size: 2 Time taken: .5h
stairs expert rated this:Rated between 4 and 4 out of 5
Played: 28/06/2020 Team size: 3 Time taken: 00:25 Outcome: Successful escape!
Society of Curiosities is a new by-mail puzzle subscription from the team behind Kauai Escape Rooms, located on a Hawaiian island in the middle of the Pacific ocean and "Mysterious Map Heist" is a short, free game they've created as both an introduction and promotion to the series. The full game is not available in the UK quite yet, but you can still play through this game as a demo of what should shortly be to come.

Gameplay is guided by SMS text message conversation with a character "Pip", who requests your assistance in the matter of locating a mysterious treasure map. You receive texts with information and hyperlinks to various online resources, and having solved a puzzle, or selected a course of action you reply with a text message response, prompting the next instruction. The chat is (mostly) natural and we had no problem with getting the chatbot to understand our messages and give an appropriate reply. The requirements to use SMS on a mobile phone as the primary game communication is a little bit odd, since a lot of the time the response contains a hyperlink that we then had to re-type into a browser on our PC, but it does add a touch of humanity to the interaction.

The puzzles are relatively unchallenging, but still satisfying and they flow very nicely - there's some logical deduction, maps, a few ciphers, and situational puzzles, and a very nice moment of interaction with a custom website. The graphic design and writing is high quality, and there has been lots of thought into little details like making the puzzles accessible (a transcript is provided of the writing on all visual clues, for example). I played with my family, and my kids aged 7, 8, and 13yrs old were all interested able to get involved.

Considering the game is free, this is a very enjoyable way to spend half an hour or so, and a very promising teaser of the full game from Society of Curiosities hopefully available here soon.

Wesley Mead expert rated this:Rated between 4.5 and 4.5 out of 5
egnor expert rated this:Rated between 3.5 and 3.5 out of 5
An amusing and charmingly done web-based puzzle adventure, with some cute online interactions and a good sense of craft and style overall. A little short but it's free!
Anonymous rated this:Rated between 4.5 and 4.5 out of 5

Reviews by escape room review sites

Mysterious Map Heist is a fantastic little intro to the world of the Society of Curiosities and, filled with real-world interaction plus one moment of nail-biting suspense, managed to create a surprising amount of realism I simply was not expecting from a free game
Fantastic!
The only reason I’m putting it as a 4 stars and not the 5 stars is clearly deserves, is because I’m sure their subscription box “Madok’s Lost Treasure” is even better. I’m saving that 5 star rating for when I get my hands on a copy.
Recommend in Quarantine
see full review
We received an envelope in the mail that brought us on a treasure hunt for. The contents of the envelope were some paper puzzles and some clues to help find an artifact of some sort. What was really clever about this game was how they integrated real life concepts that blurred the line between game play and reality.
Ⓜ️

Read the full, detailed review at EscapeMattster.com ⬊

Immersive

Mysterious Map Heist was a fun and well-crafted interactive puzzle hunt that served as an excellent taster for Society of Curiosities’ subscription box. Highly recommended!

Highly Recommended

This is a smaller-in-scope mystery experience that is designed to onboard you into the Society of Curiosities world before you play Madok’s Lost Treasure. Though smaller in scope than Madok’s—it took me less than an hour to make it through—this was still a really fun adventure.

See also