Enigma Fellowship: The Scattered Cards

The Sonnburg Police Department has been investigating mysterious disappearances of citizens in the city for the past few weeks. The case has only taken a turn for the worse now that a Police Officer has turned up missing as well. The only connection seems to be random playing cards received by each victim before they vanished. The Enigma Fellowship has been brought in due to our expertise in code breaking.

Rating: Fun
Completion Time: 1hr 45 minutes
Date Played: 28th December 2020
Party Size: 2
Recommended For: Budding Detectives

The Scattered Cards is the second experience in the Enigma Fellowship subscription, following The Lost Knowledge and takes a bold but refreshing turn in terms of gameplay! This time rather than journeying across the globe for an epic treasure hunt for ancient artefacts, your specialist skills have been called in on a very different case: Kidnapping!

Three people (including a police officer!) are missing! The Sonnberg Police Department has tried all they can to catch the culprit but they’ve vanished into thin air. Leaving behind only… Some playing cards? But what sort of criminal would leave such a calling card? That’s up to you to determine.

If you’ve played The Lost Knowledge, expect something very different in this game much more akin to a murder mystery. For starters, it’s a lot less linear! In fact, you can take one of three routes to the conclusion, depending on who (or where) you choose to investigate first.

Myself and Player 2 took a rather haphazard route and tackled a little bit of everything all at once, which worked out well for us! Thats how I imagine all good crime cases being solved – by spilling all the evidence you’ve unlocked so far out onto a table and puzzling it out. Besides, the game requires you to take a few steps back. A tiny clue you spotted earlier in the game will come back in another part, and so on. It’s a classic detective case in every sense of the word.

We cracked the case in just under 2 hours – a respectable time given all the breaks we took to top up our drinks and grab more post-Christmas leftover snacks. I’m not sure if it’s the haze of the time of the year, but we did find The Scattered Cards a lot harder than The Lost Knowledge. So beginners beware! The former, rather than this one, might be a better case to tackle if it’s your first.

Difficult, yes, but no less enjoyable! The theme resonates a lot with me. There’s a lot to read (again, I enjoy being immersed in a game), lots to listen to, laptops to crack, safes to unlock and cool facts to uncover. In particular, I learned a lot about different card games and, by the end of the game got to keep the cards too. Meaning you learn something new and get to take that knowledge away with you to play outside of the game. This happened too with The Lost Knowledge, and is a lovely touch by Enigma Fellowship games. I honestly always feel like I learn something new.

As a final note before I sign off this review, I wanted to point out two little Easter Eggs that did make me laugh. There’s a Pierce… Anne Edison… Shirley… Winger… Ms Nadir? Can you spot it yet? There’s probably more I didn’t spot (I’ve actually never really seen the TV show the references are from oops), but the pattern was delightful!

Oh, and the second Easter Egg? I’m convinced there were Werewolves in the game. I’m just saying. The less I say about that the better. It’s probably the snacks and drinks talking.

Overall, good fun! A little tricky, but if you like detective games, this is a fun one to while away an afternoon over.

The Scattered Cards can be purchased for $22 USD on Enigma Fellowship’s website.