Hunt A Killer’s ‘Curtain Call’ Box Set Review: An Exciting Mystery

If you’ve ever read a crime novel or watched a crime TV show and figured out who the culprit was before it was actually revealed, you’ll probably love Hunt A Killer’s Curtain up box set. This box set is packed with intrigue, a great mix of easy and challenging puzzles and codes, and pretty trinkets that bring the story to life.

You take on the role of a detective investigating a cold case from the 1930s involving a famous actress named Viola Vane. She mysteriously disappeared in the 1930s while working on a show at the Cadence Theater. The current owner of the Cadence Theatre, Julia Adler, discovered a body in a suitcase in the attic while sorting through it. It was later discovered that the body actually belonged to Viola Vane, as Julia expected, and now she needs your help to solve this cold case that the police just don’t seem interested in solving.

The box set is divided into six different episodes, and each episode requires you to answer a key case-related question based on the documents in front of you and on a virtual desktop accessed via a simple website URL . I love that there are six separate boxes because it’s perfect for splitting up for a weekly game night, whether you’re completing one box or two at a time. And believe me; Curtain up is a great choice for game nights as long as everyone is 14 years old!

A brief overview of Hunt A Killer

If you’re unfamiliar with the Hunt A Killer brand, the company made its name by creating a monthly subscription service that creates fictional murders and gives you the evidence to solve the case. There isn’t a new case to solve every month, but rather a single case that spans a six-month period. That’s why you can pay for a monthly subscription, or pay for six or twelve months upfront if you want to try out a full Hunt A Killer season for a lower overall price.

In addition to monthly subscriptions, Hunt A Killer now offers standalone board games and episodic box sets. The standalone board games typically cost around $30, although there are premium options for more money, and everything you need to solve the puzzle is included in a single box. You can personally find the standalone board games at many major stores, including the one we had the privilege of reviewing –Nancy Drew – Mystery at Magnolia Gardens.

The first episode was incredibly easy and the goal was to find the murder weapon. It took me a couple of hours to read through everything, but if you just wanted to read through the documents that were immediately relevant to answering the question, it would only take 15-30 minutes to complete the episode. Granted, the Curtain up Set is backtracked, so you may need to go back and read through some of the docs you skipped if future episodes call for it. In the first box there were no ciphers to decipher or puzzles to solve, just a few cursive documents to read and a cufflink found as evidence.

I remember thinking by the time I finished the first episode that it was almost too easy – and thinking that if they couldn’t figure out the murder weapon the police must have done their job poorly or not been paying attention – but I think so , so these sets are designed. From what I’ve been able to glean online, the first episode of pretty much every Hunt A Killer set is about getting acquainted with the characters, setting the stage for future episodes, and just learning how things work.

In the second episode, my goal was to acquit one of the seven current suspects. It took me about two hours to decide and I was wrong. When I sent my initial reply to Julia Adler, the owner of the Cadence Theatre, she came back and said she didn’t agree and that I should try again.

That’s when I discovered that nothing in the box exposed a suspect, and I had to search the virtual desktop to find the piece of evidence I needed to exonerate the right suspect. Reading through the materials in episode one, I didn’t realize you had to use the virtual desktop to find key evidence. I thought it was just a helpful resource and where to submit your answers, but no – the virtual desktop that you access through a website is critical to finding the right answers throughout the case.

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Inside this second box was a Cadence Theater pin and handkerchief with a V in one corner and an E in the opposite corner. The handkerchief gave an easy clue to solving the scrambled letter in that box, but it was not necessary to decipher the letter. I was a little disappointed that the coded letter was easy to solve, but the box took two hours to complete. So if it was a more difficult cryptogram, it probably would have taken me a lot longer.

Also, I have no trouble reading cursive, but I was grateful for a transcribed version of the encoded italic letter because I didn’t have to guess what those random letters that didn’t make up an actual word were. To solve the cipher, I printed out the transcribed version of the scrambled letter, and then used that piece of paper to write my notes and figure out what the letter actually said.

Episodes three and four were similar to box two because the goal was the same: rule out a murder suspect. The cipher in box three was similar enough to the cipher in box two that it was fairly easy to solve. Then box four contained a construction plan broken down into several parts that had to be put together like a jigsaw puzzle. It wasn’t relevant to this particular box, but I knew that Curtain up had backtracking so i put all the pieces together and took a picture for later. Both the third and fourth episodes lasted about an hour and brought the list of suspects from seven to four.

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While episode five had the same goal as episodes two, three, and four – shutting down a murder suspect – it took me nearly three times as long to complete the box. Still, with this box I had enough information to finally go back and solve some of the puzzles I had been ignoring up to this point. These puzzles didn’t need to be solved before emailing Julia Adler with a correct answer, so I just saved them until episode five. Solving the puzzles provided some pretty interesting context though, and I think it made it easier to come to a definitive conclusion in box six.

The Hunt A Killer mysteries are all about finding motive, means, and the murder weapon, and I think I was too preoccupied with motive in this box and the previous three boxes when I needed to focus on means. I had to ask myself, “Who can I definitely rule out based on the documents and evidence I have?” instead of thinking about who gained something from Viola Vane’s death.

In episode six, I had to consider both means and motive, although I was ultimately able to find the killer by proving that the other two suspects didn’t have the means to commit the murder. The last box of the set took me about two to three hours, but again I spent a lot of time cracking the remaining codes just for fun before emailing my final answer to Julia via the virtual desktop.

Conclusion: If you like reading and solving puzzles, you will love this

As you decode intricately encrypted messages and solve puzzles along the way, you’ll find the answers to the Curtain up Mystery relies heavily on reading the included papers and looking through documents on the virtual desktop. So if you don’t like to read or don’t have someone on your detective team who likes to read, solving this riddle might not be a particularly fun experience.

I like reading crime novels and Curtain up gave me the opportunity to read the story and the evidence first hand and then draw my own conclusions rather than reading a mystery uncovered by a novelist. All in all solving Hunt A Killer Curtain up Box set lasted about 10 hours and I enjoyed every second of it.