Escape Room Style Entertainment At Home — Reviewing ‘Finders Seekers’ Mysteries

I’ll admit it. I’m difficult to shop for. I have a lot of weird, expensive interests, and if I see something that I want, I usually just get it myself. Life is too short not to get the stupid little things that make you happy. My wife is an amazing gift giver. I don’t know how she does it, but she always finds me the coolest crap. 

She recently teamed up with my 10 year old son to get a puzzle for me from an online retailer called Finders Seekers. The site offers monthly  subscription plans for “escape room games” that start at $30 and range up to $300. Home sleuths also have the option of buying surplus games from previous months for $35 apiece. My wife and son chose National Parks from the overstock tab. 

The puzzle arrived in an official looking envelope, printed to look like a bound dossier. There were some items inside, including printed materials and physical props. Due to the nature of this type of activity, I won’t list off the individual contents, but I’ll say that they were reasonably well-made and interesting. Some of this stuff obviously has no use in real life, but a couple of the objects are handsomely displayable in your home. 

As far as the quality of the riddles themselves, they were top notch. I’m a puzzler. I love logic games, physical puzzles, riddles, and mysteries. This National Parks mystery kept me and my ten year old busy for a solid 90 minutes, if not just a tad longer. The individual puzzles were unique from each other, and were cleverly tied into the theme, building to the encompassing riddle that ended the session. For the list price of $35, I’d say this thing was well worth the expense. For the sale price my wife got it, more so. 

I had such a good time, I went back to the Finders Seekers website to see what other themed games were available. I picked out a second puzzle, Ireland Mystery. Then I noticed they also offer a kid version of the games, called Junior Explorer, so I found and ordered Junior Explorers Scotland for my son to do on his own. 

Ireland Mystery lived up to every bit of the standard set by National Parks Mystery, but, unfortunately, that brings us to Junior Explorers Scotland. As soon as the envelope was opened, I could see that the quality of the ‘Junior’ props are not even close to the quality of the standard kits.

Instead of the large, full color puzzle pages that came with mine, his had a little booklet. I watched as he blasted through the puzzles in about 12 minutes, with very little difficulty. The only problems he was having were with the quality and condition of the props themselves. 

Two of the physical objects included should have been able to be saved and used as toys down the line. Except they arrived broken. One didn’t function properly, and the other was so poorly designed that there was no way to even assemble it. The clues associated with the props were still decipherable, because they were printed on the objects and didn’t rely at all on the actual operation of the toys, but it’s still a disappointment. 

I also noticed a factual error in the Scotland Junior Explorers kit. On one page they listed Sir William Wallace as the ‘Braveheart.’ That’s some modern nonsense that came out of Mel Gibson’s 1995 film. The real Braveheart was King Robert I of Scotland, also known as Robert the Bruce.

The Bruce died in 1329 at home in Cardross after a protracted illness. On his deathbed, he asked that his heart be removed and taken to the Holy Land by his friend Sir James Douglas. The Black Douglas attempted to follow Robert’s last wishes, but was unable to complete the mission. He and the rest of the crusading Scots only got as far as Southern Spain in their fight against the Moors, when they found themselves surrounded.

The story states that Douglas hurled The Bruce’s heart toward the enemy, crying “Onward, Braveheart, Douglas shall follow thee or die!” King Robert’s heart is now interred at Melrose Abbey, near the Scottish border.

Accuracy is important, especially when stating facts. It would seem Finders Seekers lifted this particular “fact” straight from Hollywood’s ridiculously inaccurate rendition of Scottish history. 

The Junior kits cost the same as the adult kits. My kid blasted through his in less than a quarter hour, and had nothing to show for it in the end, because the take-away toys were DOA. 

One of the things Finders Seekers advertises on their site and socials is how available they are to help. If you are missing a part, you can email the team, and they say they’ll send it out to you post haste. I emailed the Seekers support team to let them know about the broken props. The website says they respond within 24 hours. It was more like four days, but they did finally respond, and said they’d send replacement props.

So… is it worth it? The adult kits absolutely are worth the price. The puzzles are sticky, the props are fun, and gameplay takes an hour and a half or more. Well worth it. The Junior kits, on the other hand, are just not on the same level. Not even close. You would almost think they were made by a completely different company. Who knows? Maybe they are. 

Finders Seekers’ subscription service and individual kits can be purchased at this link. (Just avoid those Junior Explorer kits.)