Christmas Puzzle Cards (Scarlet Envelope) // Review

The Christmas Puzzle Cards collection is a set of festive greeting cards and postcards from Scarlet Envelope. Bored of sending a standard Christmas card? Looking for something extra special to usher in the festive season? Look no further! These puzzle cards will make your loved ones smile, as they work to unlock hidden messages.

Requirements: A pen or pencil. An internet-connected device is required for hints only.

First impressions

The Scarlet Envelope Christmas Kickstarter has become an annual tradition, with the Canada-based company expanding its range of joyful festive puzzle cards. The collection began with a more traditional greeting card style and has since expanded to include a series of postcards. Each year, the team dream up new and exciting puzzles and mechanics to delight both those who buy the cards and their recipients.

There are cards available at a range of difficulty levels, meaning that your friend or loved one doesn’t have to be a puzzle enthusiast to crack them. Equally, some of the cards offer more challenging puzzles that will satisfy the seasoned puzzle lover in your life.

Presentation

As I’ve come to expect from the Scarlet Envelope Christmas range, the presentation is superb. Each of the cards features vibrant, colourful artwork that is sure to bring a smile to the receiver’s face. The addition of UV spotting and the excellent print quality make for a premium feel. In fact, the cards are so pretty that I literally don’t want to give them away, so you may want to buy extras!

The Cards

Postcards

The set of five postcards spans a range of festive settings and different types of puzzles. The current options are: Holiday Mail, Have Your Shelf A Merry Little Christmas, Here’s To Snow Much Fun, Christmas Gift Shop and Merry Christmas.

I would say Holiday Mail is the easiest of the bunch, and it is super kid-friendly. I sent this to my nieces last year, who loved solving it and couldn’t wait to tell me how clever they were! My personal favourites are Have Your Shelf A Merry Little Christmas and Christmas Gift Shop. None of the puzzles is particularly hard, taking up to 15 minutes to solve, but they are all enjoyable.

Greeting Cards

If you are looking for a more traditional greeting card, packed with multiple puzzles, then you can’t go wrong with Scarlet Envelope’s offering. There are three cards to choose from, each featuring different artwork and puzzles:

• Clawy Christmas: Find all the hidden clues and discover why Santa’s furry friend is causing clawful chaos this Christmas.
• Rookie Reindeer: Navigate six festive challenges to help the newest member of Rudolf’s team earn their iconic reindeer name
• Santa’s Wish: Embark on a magical quest to unveil Santa’s cryptic message hidden within a jolly poem and cozy art.

These cards have longer solve times compared to the postcards, mainly because they feature more puzzles. My favourite is Clawy Christmas, which I was very sad to gift to someone else last year. That being said, I loved all three of these cards and found them to be pitched at a perfect difficulty level. They take around 45 minutes to complete on average, depending on your level of experience.

New Card on the Block

But that’s not all! A new greeting card – Santa’s Code Machine – has just launched on Kickstarter, promising an exciting new puzzle mechanic. You’ll be able to crack Santa’s code first by solving the six puzzles, and then you can encode a message of your own. This allows you to personalise the card with a secret message for your recipient, which they will then have to crack. If you back Santa’s Code Machine on Kickstarter, you will also have the option to add any of the above cards to your order. So definitely worth checking out!

Verdict

Disclaimer: Scarlet Envelope kindly sent me a copy of these cards in exchange for an honest review. This in no way influences the content of my review, which accurately depicts my experience.