Wednesday, January 20, 2021

BoxOne - Solved!




I've been watching Chris Ramsay's puzzle solving youtube channel for at least a year, and he's had some amazing stuff featured there. Back on Oct. 29th, he had a interview with Neil Patrick Harris, to introduce NPH's new BoxOne game. It's a solitaire box intended to keep one person busy for a few hours (I spent maybe 4 hours on it total) to a couple days. It's a combined trivia, cipher, sequential discovery puzzle, and online escape room all rolled up into one, produced by Theory11, and sold only through Target for $29.99 (only in the U.S. right now, but Theory11 says they're working on getting it to the U.K. "soon"). It's hard to say how many copies sold (I consider the price extremely reasonable for what you get). There's a list of people who also solved it, but only 10 for the day I registered. There were roughly 560 reviews on the Target site, too, but that may still be an undercount. I'm kind of torn - 2 months after the game came out, I'd like to think that I'm in rarefied air for solving the game, but I'd also really hope that BoxOne turns into a blockbluster, encouraging companies to come out with even better boxes in the future.



One of the requirements after solving the game is that you don't give away any of the secrets. Just post about it on Instagram and Twitter, and maybe pass the box on to someone else that will appreciate it (not everyone will).

Is it worth the money? Oh, yeah. Just for the rush of seeing everything unfold. Would I recommend it to people that like solving ciphers and "escape rooms in a box"? Without question. Is the rule not to give away any of the secrets killing me? Yes, even as we speak.

I just wish Target had outlets in Japan. The overseas shipping costs are unbelievable.

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