Missive

Missive starts with the familiar my-grubby-apartment setting, but really it's about a murder mystery wrapped in word puzzles - armchair detective work at its finest. An alternative headline for this would naturally be "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

The puzzles are optional, not connected, and of the cryptic crossword type. A phrase in the text might prompt the reader to look for, say, every third letter of each word. These were pretty fun, even if most of the puzzles were completely unintelligible to me.

Good if you like cryptic crosswords and lots of wordplay loosely connected to plot.

Missive is clever and fun, but is a bit of a mismatch. It has a gripping and interesting story about a man who just went through a breakup interacting with both his ex girlfriend and a mysterious present.

These form two fairly distinct stories that are both good. The true relationship between you and your ex slowly comes out in a very clever way. The present story involves sifting through old letters and deciphering puzzles. If you get the puzzles right, you pick the correct next letter to read. It doesn't tell you if you were right till the end, making lawnmowering hard. You can have a great experience without solving all the puzzles.

The game has some scattered profanity and frequent alcohol use. These usually turn me off of a game, but the PC was painted as a (to me) lovable guy going through a hard time, so I had sympathy for him. Good game.