Summary: No costume party can compare to the annual Grimm Fairytale Ball. All of the wealthy elites and influential people of Valley Falls will be there. For years, you've imagined what such an event would be like in person, but you have never been rich nor important enough to receive an invitation. Yet, all of that changes when the hostess of the party, Cynthia Grimm, hires you to uncover the identity of a blackmailer who calls themselves the Pied Piper. The Pied Piper has threatened to reveal family secrets that would destroy Miss Grimm if their demands aren't met. These secrets have the potential to harm not only Miss Grimm but all of the charities she is a part of. Your client believes the Piper will be at the ball and has given you open access to the guests in attendance. This time you have no intention of paying the Piper. Instead, you plan to beat them at their own game! So, grab a costume, investigate all of the fairy tale characters that have shown up for the evening, and see if you can solve the Mystery at the Fairytale Ball.
This week's game - the Mystery at the Fairytale Ball!
I will admit, our group had a moment of apprehension when we saw that this game was made in 2018. After all, our last 2018 representative - Indigo House - had some real iffy logic and dissatisfying design that left us frustrated and baffled.
However, I am pleased to say, Fairytale Ball felt… astonishingly alike Death of a Fool in terms of execution.
It was solid.
You play as a detective specializing in behavioral profiling, and Cynthia Grimm reaches out to you to invite you to her fairytale masquerade to figure out the identity of the mysterious Piper; everyone has a role at this ball, but the Pied Piper has sent our host multiple letters demanding Cynthia's resignation from the family company, or else the Piper will have his revenge. Step down, or see the Piper ruin the family name Cynthia has worked so hard to improve.
This game starts strong on its themes, and rides the line between ridiculousness, intrigue, and downright fun pretty deftly.
Each of the guests has a character, after all, and they're all committed. Minus, I suppose, the Big Bad Wolf real estate agent, whose zipper has gotten stuck and begs your help in freeing him from furrydom.
Alright and full disclaimer - I left the review sitting at this point for like, two weeks and am now typing it up before we sit down for our next game tomorrow, so details might be more sparse aha.
Alright so yeah, we had the Wolf of Wall Street, and Goldilocks - who wanted three extremely specific appetizers from the spread and they had to be jusssstt right.
It was… honestly really charming. It was fun! It was funny! The ridiculous balance was really pleasing, and imagining our group all crowded around, squinting suspiciously at trays of appetizers trying to decide if green olives would be fine or not and you know. Of course Goldilocks would be picky. You kind of gotta respect the level of character performance going on at this masquerade; it really helped carry, too, just how out there the NPCs in this game are. It's nutty, but it's all wrapped in fairy tale ball trappings, so it works.
Everyone here just really likes LARPing.
But I think the funniest thing was that… there was a Rumplestilkskin LARPer, right? And his whole thing was guessing what the guy's actual name was, and he had this big list of clues so you could puzzle it out and I think… the next milisecond after we finished reading it, one of our group just. Immediately solved it.
Absolute props to them, it would have taken the rest of us much longer, but it was just so funny to have your fae trickster just barely finish his shpeal when it's immediately popped. I'd lose my shit. I did lose my shit. RIP to that guy.
There was also a fun little logic puzzle of a character who told a ton of lies, but had a lot of rules about how and when he'd lie, and untangling the big list of statements he made to pick out the Hot Family Gossip was enjoyable!
I think I'm forgetting one, maybe, but another little change from the usual format in this one I enjoyed was that we actually didn't have a suspect list at the start? We had to ask around the party and gain our list that way, and that was fun! I liked it. Reasons to be chasing after these folks, or giving them more scrutiny.
This half of the game was looking at your gained suspect list and trying to match them to the behavioral profile your detective has made of the Pied Piper, using various observations and little tricks to discretely take their measures. And I think this is the weaker half of the game, really; sometimes suspects get eliminated for really kind of flimsy reasons, or they expect you to move forward with elimination even outside of puzzle time, which makes sense once you step back, but in the moment, DBMS games are so reliant on Puzzle, it almost feels like breaking the rules kicking someone out of the lineup if a puzzle doesn't explicitly tell you so.
I think, actually, I'll leave it at that.
Mystery at the Fairytale Ball was definitely one of the stronger Deadbolt games. A fun romp, and if you want to give one of their games a spin, I think this would be a good one to do so with.
I still think the detective and the queen should have kissed.
