Base price: $35.
1+ players.
Play time: It’s a puzzle; depends on your group.
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Full disclosure: A review copy of Beyond the Kelp was provided by Odd Pieces.
Yes, finally back on the puzzle train! Puzzles are a very pleasant form of relaxation for me, so, inevitably, I was hoping to find more ways to blend them with work. Also hoping for more EXIT Jigsaw Puzzles this year, but we’ll see when we see, on that front. In the meantime, I’m checking out a quick puzzle from Odd Pieces! It’s one of those puzzles where the puzzle you build is a later version of the scene on the box, so you get to explore more of the narrative as you build the puzzle. This time we’re going Beyond the Kelp!
In Beyond the Kelp, you’re faced with a fairly disconnected society under the ocean. People are getting crabby, stressed about school, and sometimes quite literally withdrawn into their shells. There’s almost certainly more ocean puns, but I have to keep you interested for like, three more paragraphs, so I’m trying to restrain myself. As you dig deeper, you’ll have to figure out what these folks need to improve their situations and you’ll find that as you assemble the puzzle! What lies beyond the kelp?
Overall: 7 / 10
Overall, I think Beyond the Kelp is fun! I’ll definitely lead off by saying that this wasn’t quite what I expected, in that it doesn’t have a lot of additional puzzles and such that I found in some of the escape room puzzle games that I played recently. Different style of game, so it’s helpful for me to lay the groundwork before I launch into it. It’s actually pretty interesting to get to write about, personally, since it’s helping flesh out the boundaries of what I usually review. Like, for instance, I typically don’t review explicit jigsaw puzzles (though, thinking back, I definitely could write up some thoughts on some I’ve done lately). This is a jigsaw puzzle with a bit of a narrative attached, so it’s somewhere between that. There! Some context. We did it.
But yes, Beyond the Kelp is quite entertaining! From a pure puzzle perspective, there were plenty of things I enjoyed. The color scheme is quite lovely, and it does a good job depicting a pleasant underwater society. I think there’s something to be said for a puzzle where the image changes from what’s on the box to what you actually build. I like it more than an image that’s completely different, granted, but that’s because here you still have a good amount of information on what you’re building towards. There’s some structure to the puzzle that remains between the start and the finish, so it’s a nice bit of connectivity. Plus, there’s some narrative throughlines that actually help you figure out what to look for in the complete puzzle, which is fun. There’s also a useful checklist of things to look out for, so while you might not get the entire gist of the puzzle, you can sometimes figure out the general idea of what you’re looking for. This ends up making the puzzle a really nice introduction to larger puzzles for folks who haven’t attempted 1000-piece ones.
I think I’d like to see a deeper narrative or something puzzlier about the whole thing, personally. There’s a wide variety of offerings for that sort of thing (especially lately, though murder mystery puzzles have been around for a while; I remember some at my parents’ house growing up) so I’ll be interested to see how Odd Pieces grows and transforms their offerings. As a slightly personal gripe, the construction of the puzzle itself wasn’t bad, but the interpiece connectivity isn’t particularly solid. It makes groups of pieces hard to move without them falling apart, which, for a puzzle where you’re going after distinct images that were hinted at, isn’t my favorite. I do appreciate the little epilogue that happens once you complete the puzzle, so I’ll be interested to see if the same stuff holds in other versions. I’m also, again, a big fan of the art style, so if they ever go for more complex fare I think I’d be really into it! In the meantime, though, if you’re looking for a fun puzzle, you want a bit of a challenge, or you just like the ocean, you might enjoy Beyond the Kelp! I had fun with it.
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