The Mystery Agency – The Vanishing Gambler

The City Adventurers were tasked with tracking down Roy Marshall, a missing casino cheat who vanished from his Las Vegas jail cell. Were we up to the task?

We were actually playing an at home escape-room puzzle by The Mystery Agency. For this title, The Vanishing Gambler we received a box themed around a missing casino cheat called Roy Marshall. Accused of cheating he had been incarcerated in a Las Vegas jail cell, under constant CCTV surveillance. However, he managed to pull off an amazing feat of magic, by vanishing from his cell. We would need to use all our powers of deduction and logic to solve this baffling mystery.

To start with there is not much to go on.

Under all the packing the box contained a torn sheet of newspaper and an evidence folder that was secured by a padlock. We’d have to find a code to open the lock to start our investigation.

Advice

Do not rush into things too quickly. this was the second one of these games we had played an we have played so many escape rooms and escape puzzles that we dove headlong into the challenge. Reading the newspaper we quickly worked out how to open the padlock and release all the evidence.

That was not entirely a good thing. Why? Because we failed to read the box lid that told us how to start the game by logging onto the Mystery Agency website to start the clock. When we did finally sign into the web site we initally tried signing on on a phone. Big mistake. You really need a big screen to examine the evidence presented online.

Also, if we had logged onto the game on a computer we should have seen the welcome letter from Chief Deputy, David Hawkin, asking for our help. This is not a throw away message, it contains important information that was failed to find in the pack…..all because we did not read the online information!

Solving The Mystery

What followed was a linear puzzle solving quest, with a mind mangling sequence of clues to crack, combination locks to solve and codes to decipher. We had to piece together information from items contained within the evidence bag and found online.

The Vanishing Gambler is supposed to take around 60 minutes to solve. We did not set a timer so no idea how long it took us. Having missed a vital clue we were really glad there were hints available. As noted above, we only logged onto the site to get the hints, so still missed the introduction and the missing clue!

Play Again Adventure

Having completed the game, there are instructions online to reset and repack the game to share with someone else. It is good to see a game where nothing is destroyed during game play.

You can see why the mystery puzzles series from The Mystery Agency have won the Best Innovator award at the @etroomers Bullseye Awards 2021. The work that goes into producing these games must be immense. Yes you are getting a sturdy boxed game containing quality props, but there are so may online additional resourced used as well, including websites and telephone contacts. This particular box contained authentic ceramic casino chips, an embossed credit card and a pack of playing cards.

There is a lot of work that has gone into this adventure. The box and its content are very good quality. So are the digital clues. Our concern with this and similar games, is how long the manufacturers are going to keep the digital clues and hint system available. we are now finding that games we played and loved during pandemic are not payable as the makers have stopped renewing their digital sites. We prefer games that can be played without the additional digital requirements.