Screaming Venice Art Heist Review | THE SCREAM, Munch’s famous painting & the art’s most haunting face, goes AWOL right before the opening of a posh Art Biennale in Venice. Art lovers are confused: anyone knows that such a well-known piece is impossible to resell! Was it taken for ransom? Or to cover up a larger story? Oh, they have NO idea…

Completion Time: 1hr 30
Date Played: 23rd January 2022
Party Size: 2 (+1)
Difficulty: Hard

If this is the face you make when trying to solve the latest Scarlet Envelope game, Screaming Venice Art Heist… Then you’re not alone!

Just kidding! Yes, this chapter in the subscription is hard, but it’s not insurmountably hard. A couple of hours and a few clues later Bianca and I cracked the codes and tracked down the missing Munch painting. All in a days work for a sunny Sunday morning over a cup of tea.

But lets get into it. What is Screaming Venice Art Heist and how did the pair of us really do with the game?

The Scream is… Missing!

The story of the latest chapter in Scarlet Envelope’s brilliant puzzle subscription follows the infamous painting known as The Scream. Just moments before the gallery’s big millennium opening, The Scream goes missing. Think Netflix’s This is a Robbery, only rather than the police there’s just you to solve the case. Eek! No pressure?!

Everything you need to solve the case is contained within one scarlet coloured envelope. Unlike previous Scarlet Envelope games, like Breakfast for a Serial Killer, we found the envelope comparatively quite light. There are some leaflets for the museum, some small slips of paper, and a bookmark. But essentially that is it.

I feel like in a real art heist case I’d probably need more to go on, but the trail of clues left behind by the master thief sure enough was there. If only we knew how to look.

Screaming at Puzzles

In terms of puzzles and difficulty, as I’ve mentioned we found this game quite tricky. Before we sat down to play, we had a chat about their other games in the series and how long they typically took – I suppose planning out our day and how many games we’d be able to power through together. But whatever we guessed this game would take – double it! We spent well over an hour and a half puzzling through Screaming Venice Art Heist and even enjoyed a break for lunch.

Where in other games the materials are spread out to provide lots of smaller puzzles, Screaming Venice Art Heist was centred around one big linear meta puzzle. The goal was simple: Find letters, convert to colours, convert that to numbers, pop the numbers on the website and Bob’s your uncle.

The linear nature of the game meant that we had to work together closely on each puzzle, but more heads weren’t necessarily better as we still managed to trip up several times. Whilst it took a while to garner the information from each step, we were equally never quite sure what to do with that information to make the jump to the next step.

There was one puzzle we felt didn’t quite work in some cultural contexts. I don’t know if it’s a Europe vs North America distinction (although the creators are themselves European), but to solve one particular step we didn’t have the same cultural point of reference on which to rely. It also wasn’t something we could Google. As to avoid spoilers, we won’t detail the puzzle, but rest assured we needed another hint at that step.

Thankfully, Scarlet Envelope always have a fantastic clue system. There’s always a mini-puzzle to solve to gain access to the hints (which even if I don’t need hints I enjoy solving as a bonus), and once you’re on the clues page it’s carefully laid out as to avoid spoilers. In this game, we became very familiar with the hints in order to keep us on track.

The Story Stole the Show!

Puzzles aside, one of the things I did love about this game was the story. I mean, I’m a sucker for an art heist and Scarlet Envelope pulled theirs’ off flawlessly! The mystery! The intrigue! The TWISTS! Ugh, yes please!

Scarlet Envelope also has a meta puzzle running through all of their envelopes which is fantastically fun to watch unfold. The bonus puzzle in Screaming Venice Art Heist that gave us our answer for the multi-chapter meta was a particularly fun one that had us thinking outside the box. It’s also probably my favourite so far and I’m officially very excited to complete the series and crack that meta!

Finally, one thing Scarlet Envelope does well and again, particularly well in this chapter is the quality of material and integration with some digital elements with the physical envelope in front of you. Think videos, sound files, actors playing out scenes and more. You know you’re getting something great with Scarlet Envelope when each new chapter arrives.

The Verdict

It’s true, we did find Screaming Venice Art Heist particularly hard. It’s easily the trickiest in the series so far and for that reason it’s probably not my favourite. There were a few uncomfortable logic leaps, and we made a few easy mistakes early on that dragged out the puzzle solving well past lunch time (Note to Self: Don’t puzzle on an empty stomach!)

But Scarlet Envelope has to be viewed as a whole and not as each individual envelope. It’s impossible that every single game in a series will resonate with every player. So all in all, I’m still in love with the company! The previous game (Wild Mansion of Mr. Ferri) is one of my all time favourites, and the envelope we played immediately after (Tale of a Golden Dragon) was absolutely flawless. No seriously, it was so damn good! I’m excited just thinking about it.

You can subscribe to Scarlet Envelope by heading to their website here.