Bluefish Games: The Curious Elevator of Mr. Hincks

Inventor Stephen P. Hincks has been developing a set of confounding puzzles and he is finally ready to present them to you.

Rating: Outstanding!
Completion Time: 1 Hour 30 Minutes
Date Played: 19th of June 2020
Party Size: 2

This has to be one of my most awaited play at home games of the season! In the current period, shipping times are long! It still didn’t stop me excitedly checking my post every day for this box. When it did arrive, I had a hefty UK customs fee to pay, but all completely worth it to get my hands on The Curious Elevator of Mr. Hincks!

The story of The Curious Elevator of Mr. Hincks is as follows, Mr Hincks. the purveyor of an extraordinary elevator (or as we call it in the UK, the less charming ‘lift’), invites you to ride to the top. As the elevator (okay it sounds weird to me I’m just going to refer to it as a lift from herein) stops at each floor, you collect a wrapped gift which helps you progress to the next level, and so on.

If 100 lift levels sounds daunting though, you actually only need to do around 7 levels or do. Each one takes around 10 minutes to complete (if you’re feeling smart), or 30 minutes (if, like us, there was a bit of arguing). Overall, we did this game spread out over an entire day. A few levels with lunch, a few more over dinner, a break for a call with friends, then smashed the last two levels with a cocktail in the evening. I’m assuming for this reason, we’ve got a solid last place on the leader board (which is a shame, I didn’t think we did that badly!)

In particular, what sets The Curious Elevator of Mr. Hincks is the quality of materials and equal quality of puzzles. Both genuinely breathtaking and the whole pack shines with the love and care that has been put into it by the creators. By this point, I’ve played a lot of ‘Play at Home’ games, but The Curious Elevator is a cut above the rest with it’s innovation and quality.

It’s also, if you couldn’t tell from the number I’ve put in this review, very photogenic! Different materials ranging from perspex, to business cards, to pencils, to a most spectacular piece of paper you have to quite literally ‘dunk’ into the elements in order to reveal the puzzle. In the words of Hincks – how extraordinary!

Rest assured I’m looking forward to returning to the incredible world of Hincksland in some of Bluefish Games’s other puzzles in the future, for example the Hincks Gazette. But until then, The Curious Elevator of Mr. Hincks is a game well deserving of all it’s praise and accolades and a great price to boot.

The Curious Elevator of Mr. Hincks can be purchased for $35 on Bluefish Game‘s website.