I’m a couch detective. I love watching true crime shows and yelling at my TV in frustration about who the obvious killer is. Now, The Woodlock University investigation game by Detective Box gives me the opportunity to start sleuthing for real. Still from the comfort of my own home mind you, but I can swap out yelling at the TV for yelling at my husband.
What Is Detective Box?
Detective Box offers investigation games with “immersive experiences”. Woodlock University is split into three parts, each with its own sealed box of documents, clues, and evidence. The idea is that each box is meant to be “like a single episode of a true-crime series”, but given that each box took us about three hours to complete, the real benefit of this segmented approach is having a decent stopping point knowing you can simply resume again another time. It’s like slowly making your way through a boxset instead of binging a show in a single sitting.
While you might want to settle in for a full day of crime-solving, we played over three evenings. You also need to remember to utilise evidence and notes from previous boxes as everything amounts to a single case, so I wouldn’t recommend taking too much of a gap between sessions and risk forgetting everything.
It’s not just what’s in the box though, you also have access to a digital portal to listen to briefs and interviews, search locations, and dig through old records. You’ll need a constant internet connection as beyond having half of your evidence presented digitally, you’ll also periodically need to submit answers to progress the investigation.
I’d recommend activating your account ahead of time as we had issues getting the verification email to come through. You can’t play until you do that, so it delayed our planned play session.
Unleash Your Inner Detective
We were so excited when we opened the first box as it feeds into that cliché of crime solving and feeds your inner true crime fan, giving you a suspect board to pin up, red thread so you make your own evidence board with different strings following different avenues of thought, and myriad reports and other evidence to sink your teeth into.
I want to avoid too many specifics to prevent spoiling the overall mystery and experience for others, but I will say you get immensely hands-on with evidence at points. In the first box is a shredded document you must resassemble, while in a later box you’ll feel like you’re back in science class with a particularly exciting prop to play around with.
The digital portal gives you questions to answer, and in doing so steers you in the right direction. You’re not going straight into who the murderer is, but navigating the crime step by step, first narrowing down possible suspects based on whether they had the time and opportunity to do what they did with no alibis to speak of.
Having said that, there are things about the digital portal I wish were more intuitive. Once you’ve interviewed someone, that’s it. You might uncover further information you wish to question them about, possibly to catch them out on a lie or ask them about something someone else has said related to the case, but trying to re-interview people will just give you the same recording over and over again.
The search function was not what I thought it would be, either. You’re presented with a map, you click an area, and I originally imagined being shown the scene and having to look for things, but no. You simply choose your location and type what you’re looking for, like “knife”, and more often than not, will find nothing.
We spent a long time trying countless words, but the sooner you realise this isn’t really a game where you’re trying to find clues in locations by chance, the better. You’ll only use the search function when you know what you’re expecting to find and where..
When The Case Goes Cold
Other than haplessly trying to use the search function more than we needed to, our only other stumbling block for the initial box was a foible that I can absolutely forgive because it’s quite clever. For most board games, you expect everything you need to be in the box or digital platform offers you. Here, things are different.
We were stumped trying to figure something out and there seemed to be no clue as to how to do it. We eventually resorted to the hint system, and you know what the answer was? Google it. Yeah. Because it was a historical piece of knowledge that we could find for ourselves. It seems like such a no-brainer, but we were so set in our board gaming ways that we didn’t think such a solution existed. And it only gets better from there.
You’ll be using websites tailor made for this game, searching for clues on Facebook, and if you find a telephone number, don’t do what we did and Google it to see if you can work out who it is. Just call it. The obvious course of action is usually the right one.
Our next stumbling block came in the second box. We had to input two names into the digital portal, but no matter how we put them in, we couldn’t solve the puzzle. Frustrated, we once again turned to the hint system, which ultimately revealed the answers we had already come to ourselves. We couldn’t understand it,even submitting a help ticket presuming it was a glitch.
Then we figured it out. This unintended puzzle is a symptom of how Detective Box works. You might have gleaned the correct answer using your impressive detective skills, but if the game thinks you need to speak to someone else or search somewhere else to have that exact information confirmed, you can’t progress until you do. For us specifically, we had to interview someone else who confirmed what we believed was true, after which the game happily accepted our answers.
It’s an incredibly frustrating feature as despite having the right answers, you’re softlocked and stuck until you speak with everyone the game deems worth speaking to on the digital portal.
There are some clever puzzles, as well as a few very smart red herrings, and despite a few frustrations, my husband and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. It challenges you to think for yourself in ways few games of this ilk tend to.
Crime Doesn’t Pay, But You Still Have To
Detective Box’s Woodlock University investigation retails for £89. I initially baulked at this price, but then I remembered I’d spent £20-£25 on other mystery games that last three to four hours a piece. Given that you get three boxes here and you’re looking at 12 hours of gameplay total, it’s not a bad deal. But given you can only play it once, it’s an asking price worth taking into consideration.
Detective Box also offers a 60 day return if you’re not happy, even if you’ve played and completed the first box.
There is currently a launch offer of £20 off, so you can purchase it for £69 instead. This is a price I’d be more happy to pay, and more importantly, more inclined to recommend the game at. Detective Box utilises some very clever clues and ideas, and despite some small annoyances in getting soft locked until doing a specific action, once you know how the game works, it’s easy enough to navigate and avoid the pitfalls. Other than asking yourself whether you’re willing to pay the price, the only question left is ‘Who killed Henry Coleman?’
