Review: KARLOV MANOR MURDERS: THE THREE-BLADE KNIFE CASE needs some polish

Beadle & Grimm’s is out Murders at Karlov Manor: The Case of the Three-Bladed Knife. This is described as a murder mystery game set in Magic: the gathering plane of Ravnica. That said, you don’t really need to know anything Magic to enjoy this product. The case of the three-bladed knife supports at least 1 player and requires a smartphone with the Pinfinity AR app. Beadle & Grimm’s was kind enough to provide me with a copy to review, but all thoughts below are my own. If you want to enjoy it, you can purchase it for $49.99 from the Beadle & Grimm store.

Gather around the table with friends for a game night you’ll never forget! Work together to connect evidence and unlock secrets in the murder mystery game The Case of the Three Blade Knife.

Anyone who is a fan of murder mystery games will love The Case of the Three Blade Knife. Players familiar with Magic: The Gathering’s world of Ravnica will appreciate the immersive story elements, but no prior knowledge of Magic: The Gathering is necessary to play!

Carefully study Chief Inspector Tam Sennic’s evidence and use the augmented reality built into your Ravnican Agency of Magicological Investigations (RAMI) badge (3″ x 3″ by Pinfinity) to identify suspects and bring a killer to justice!

I’m extremely ambivalent about it The case of the three-bladed knife. There are things I loved like the use of augmented reality, but I also didn’t like certain aspects. I played it with my wife and the first thing to note is that this experience is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Depending on how you take care of the included items, you could maybe give it to friends or something, but it seems to be just a one-night experience. This isn’t a bad thing in itself, but it’s important to know moving forward. Let’s talk about some of my problems and then we’ll end on a more positive note.

I want to start with my nitpicks. First, I don’t think I would call The case of the three-bladed knife a game. For me personally it’s an experience, but it’s not enough to make it a game. There are no timers, no opposing forces, nothing to put any kind of pressure on, and nothing to “win” on. Essentially, the first part of the game has players reading and looking at tons of documents that contain all the clues to catch a suspect. Then, you select your suspect using the AR pin and this starts the second part of the experience which gives you more documents to delve into and complete the narrative. That’s right, the vast majority of the time you dedicate to this experience is spent reading. If this doesn’t sound like fun to you, it’s not something you’ll enjoy.

Another nitpick I have is what it’s called Murders at Karlov Manor yet none of the murders happen at Karlov Manor! I know that’s the name of the Magic set, but it certainly could have been the scene of at least one of the murders. My third nitpick is that I feel the AR pin is underutilized. You use it to select the suspect, get the solution, get hints and then about 3-4 items interact with the translator and audio decoder and I was hoping for more from this last point.

Now on to my number one complaint. In my opinion, The case of the three-bladed knife it’s best as a one-person experience. Because there are so many documents to sift through, it’s natural that you’ll want to divide up the work, but then each person is missing pieces that highlight certain aspects and so as you discuss what you’ve been through it’s extremely easy for important information to be overlooked because something is only important if you have information from each group of documents. This means that everyone will probably read everything (or at least most newspapers). So, what’s the point of having more than one person?

Another complaint I have is that Phase 2 felt extremely short and extremely easy. The first phase probably took 45-60 minutes to complete due to all the documents to sift through and it was a little more difficult to locate the suspect (still not difficult if you went through all the documents), but then the second phase gave us Required maybe 10-15 minutes to put it all together. Honestly, the story isn’t bad, but for the amount of work we had to put into reading all of it, it felt a little lackluster. By the time we selected “Solution” in the AR app, I had about 95% of the story figured out. I wish there had been a little more detail that I might have missed and been surprised by. These are my favorite mysteries when I can figure out about 75-80% of the puzzle but there are some details that I can’t quite put together but they don’t stop me from solving the mystery as a whole. Since I had so much of the story, pushing “Solution” just felt ceremonial.

Now let’s talk about the positive aspects of The case of the three-bladed knife. The materials in this experience are so well crafted. Beadle & Grimm’s has a reputation for providing high quality materials and this is no exception. There are papers with the edges that look like they’re torn, there’s an invitation that’s actually wrinkled to match the description, the drawings look great on the posters and map, etc. Honestly, it’s thanks to the attention to detail and quality of content that I do think the game isn’t overly priced. At most, I’d say it should be closer to $40, but I feel like that would be a very nitpicky argument that isn’t worth making.

Another good thing is the “Tips” button in the AR app. It actually worked well at providing suggestions to point you towards solutions without giving it to you outright. We only used it to confirm that we were looking at the correct details right before selecting our suspect.

At the end of the day, The case of the three-bladed knife it was a good idea with extremely well made content but my wife and I didn’t like it very much. I wish there had been something more to pull me into the final story and make me go, ‘Ohhhh!’ I wish some of the app’s tools had been more integrated into finding clues. I wonder if there’s a better way to have this experience with more than one person than just all sitting around reading, having a little discussion, reading documents they didn’t start with because there are details that aren’t brought up because they’re important only when other people mention their seemingly unimportant details, arguing for another five minutes or so, and then they figured out the suspect. I would love to see Beadle & Grimm refine this idea and come out with something that better suits me and my love of mystery novels.