Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
I sat down with The Morrison Game Factory having nary a clue as to what it was about. An old toy factory, I’d surmised from the name and art, but that was about it. There wasn’t much to go on in the box. An old catalog, a short letter, a page that felt like one of those activity sheets children get at chain restaurants, and a repair log were the only clues. I started doing the only thing you can do at the start of one of these games, patiently sifting through everything until something clicked.
Story
The first few minutes of The Morrison Game Factory are a heady rush. The game starts slow, as you sift through all the random bits available, but the feeling of progress accelerates rapidly, and culminates in a moment that exists in my memory as though it were a scene in a Brian DePalma movie. I am John Travolta, spinning around in that chair.
Piecing together what to do with the scant bits of information I had was exciting. Why exactly it was exciting, I won’t say. Discovery is key to the joy of a game like this. What I will say is that designer Lauren Bello has created an escape room with a prologue and two acts, and the prologue peaks wonderfully.
That then leads into the narrative. My general operating principle is to not divulge more about escape rooms than the publishers do, and PostCurious has been tight-lipped about what happens in The Morrison Game Factory, so you’re not going to get much in the way of solid information here. I’d apologize, but with The Morrison Game Factory, learning more about the titular factory and seeing how the story evolves is truly magical. I don’t want to deprive anyone of that.
You will need a computer. That much I’ll say. The story plays out in text on the screen. As a rule, the puzzles are all found in tangible objects. You never lose the sense of tactility, of a real-world experience, but you do spend a lot of time reading on the monitor. Not that I mind. This is probably the most narratively-focused escape room game I’ve ever played, even more so than the remarkable The Light in the Mist, and I’d wager I spent more time reading than I did playing.
That’s not a complaint. The story is involving and rewarding. By the end of the game, you care very much for its central characters. Bello’s experience as a screenwriter, as someone who knows how to build characters and tone, is evident in her work here. The best moments of The Morrison Game Factory live as vibrant images in my imagination. Ten years from now, I might swear the story was told through animatics.
Puzzles
“Enough of the story!,” you say. “That’s not why we’re here! We play escape rooms for puzzles!” The puzzles are generally excellent, with a few truly striking ideas I haven’t come across before. Your patience and attention to detail are rewarded throughout, especially as the difficulty increases towards the end. One puzzle is so novel that I excitedly showed it to my roommate.
As seems to be a remarkable trend with PostCurious, I was never stuck. I don’t mean to say that I wasn’t challenged. I certainly was. I mean to say that I never felt like there was nothing I could do to progress. Every time I tried something and it didn’t work, I tried something else. There’s always space for discovery and creativity. It never feels like you’re caught in a cul-de-sac.
It’s also worth mentioning the comparatively abbreviated playtime. Working by myself, The Morrison Game Factory took about 90-120 minutes to complete. PostCurious games regularly hit five or more hours, so it does bear specifying that this is much more digestible. That’s good, because it’s also the first PostCurious game I’ve played that doesn’t readily break into chapters. I recommend doing this in one sitting.
The Morrison Game Factory is Bello’s first published game. I hope to see more from her, and to see more professional writers get involved in the crafting of narrative game experiences. You can really feel the difference when a story has been put together by people who know what they’re doing. Like all escape rooms, The Morrison Game Factory is a single use product, but this is one that’s easy to reset and give to somebody else. You only need to replace one piece of paper, which is available for download from the PostCurious website.
The Morrison Game Factory is challenging, creative, novel, and touching. I can’t give you higher praise, or a stronger recommendation, than that.
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