Table of Contents

Location: Home

Date Played: Jan 2024

Team size: 1; recommended 1-2 players

Duration: 1 hour/game (total 24 hours)

Price: ~USD$247 on their website

Premise

Hincksville is quite the perplexing town! As a resident, and avid reader of The Hincks Gazette, you know it’s up to you to unwind the enigmas hidden within this puzzling newspaper.


Each issue of The Hincks Gazette is a self-contained game which includes a front-page article filling you in on the debacle currently turning Hincksville upside down, and a path of connected puzzles which will ultimately help you solve the central conundrum and save* the day! (*wherein “save” can be defined as, but not limited to: successfully troubleshooting your houseplant that won’t stop sassing you, preserving the historical record of astronautical dinosaurs, or uncovering the truth behind the suspiciously helpful robot bellhops).

Components

The extra items within the deluxe box sets are collectibles, they do not impact the game whatsoever and serve as fun trinkets to keep as rememberance of the game. 

Each game revolves around a single piece of double-sided newspaper sheet. Aside from the quality of the material of the newspaper feeling like newspaper, there's nothing much that can be said about it. There's no wow factor whatsoever regarding the components but it does give off a cozy charm reading it while sipping on a cup of coffee or tea.

Gameplay

You start off your journey by looking for the "START" in one of the sections of the newspaper. From there you'll solve various puzzles that will lead you to various sections of the newspaper before reaching the solution to solve the main headline.

Should you ever get stuck, you may refer to their website for an extensive list of hints for each puzzle (~25 hints/game).

Puzzles/Thoughts

➕Fun puzzles. While most of them aren't ground-breaking, they do scratch that puzzling itch.

➕Staggered Hint system. I always enjoy a hint system with many hints. It helps me to get that satisfaction of solving a puzzle without revealing too much of it.

➖Some repetitive puzzles. Having played through all 24 issues, it was inevitable to spot quite a number of repeat puzzles albeit in a different format.

➖Occasional busywork. Even when I've figured out how to approach the solution, there are some puzzles that require me to spend a good few minutes decoding the solution out.

✖️ External knowledge required. For example, you'll require knowledge of common pop culture references or common board games to solve some puzzles. Thankfully, you can use the internet to aid you on your quest.

✖️ Lots of wordplay puzzles. Wordplay puzzles makes The Hincks Gazette very inaccessible for players who aren't fluent in the english language. Some puzzles uses Oronym but more often than not falls flat for me.

✖️ Slightly pricey. At ~USD$10/newspaper, the amount of components/puzzles you get for that price seems rather low.

Verdict

The Hincks Gazette will definitely be enjoyable for many people. While it's not particularly innovative, it excels at what it attempts to do: a cozy puzzle game to work on at the start or end of your day.

Rating: 3/5

★★★✩✩

You can buy their game here