Sherlock's Camera — Boxes and Booze

Sherlocks Camera

Listen closely, or you may well find your ears roughly severed and mailed to your next of kin, packed with salt in a cardboard box. Gruesome, no? Yet fair game for the tenant of 221B Baker Street, who has a nose for such things. The game is afoot again in Scotland Yard thanks to our friends at iDventure, who make some of the very best “escape room in a box” style puzzle boxes and have even coined the ideal term for these, the “Cluebox”. The team at iDventure, a company based in Meerbusch, Germany have been successfully creating these self-contained adventures over the past few years and have garnered a worldwide reputation as leaders in the field, thanks to their meticulous engineering, prototyping, workshopping, playtesting, and innovative use of mixed materials and entertaining themes. The core group of three partners who formed the company came from the escape room industry, bringing experience in both escape board games and physical escape room design and development, which they have harnessed to push the boundaries of what can be done in a self contained, mass production ready box.

The director of marketing at iDventure recently shared some thoughts about their newest creation, a fabulously interesting mixed media box made from laser cut wood and acrylic featuring magnets, ball bearings, a “lens” and all manner of intriguing mechanisms on each side which they call the “Sherlock’s Camera”. Inside this enticingly designed and illustrated cardboard box, you won’t find any human ears, but you will find your next favorite Cluebox. The backstory presents the object as something only recently discovered in the archives of Scotland Yard, left as a legacy by none other than the great consulting detective himself. Careful observation about the box will reveal many references to the Conan Doyle stories, to those well versed in the lore and literature. Like all iDventure Clueboxes, the Camera began life over a year prior to its launch on Kickstarter, making its way through their rigorous development process to reach the final version.

From Alexander Krys: “It’s difficult to find person who doesn't like Sherlock :) My personal favorites are Sign of Four, Dancing Man, Speckled Band (it was really scary when i was a kid) and of course Baskerville. I’m a big fan of Sherlock and always wanted to do something in this direction, actually all riddles in some way connected to Sherlocks stories, maybe it's not so obvious in some of them but they are. We even had an idea of contest with a gold Victorian sovereign for the person who got all the stories but we dropped it as not winning people might get upset.”

“This is [one of our] most complex boxes, and considering that we made some [highly complex] boxes already, the main challenge is to create new types of puzzles and not to repeat ourselves from the past creations. Some of the puzzles took 20+ prototypes to achieve the quality we wanted. We did a lot of changes, each puzzle changed many times, it's [in fact] difficult to say what didn’t change.” Making the Sherlock’s Camera is a “very complex production assembly process, as we added many new components like magnets, mirror etc. That’s actually why we are out of stock for next few months because production is very slow.” The Camera features a few highly novel aspects which have not been seen previously on their puzzles, and Alexander admits that a few of these cool new mechanisms are not surprisingly, his favorite things about the box.

He also relates a harrowing experience straight out of a Holmes tale. The team was traveling with their very first prototype to Berlin last year via train, and left the prototype on the train! They very nearly forgot it there, but thankfully for all of us managed to secure the precious cargo again. He recalls it was “not real fun”! As with their prior puzzle boxes, the Camera was launched as a Kickstarter campaign which has now concluded, and orders are currently being fulfilled. Their company is doing well, and they explained the decision process around this launch model. “We're very glad our community continues to support us. This indicates people like what we do and that’s very important. We continue to do KS because first of all we are grateful to the community who supported us at the very start and gave a chance to develop, so we would like to have them be able to get first access to our products and hear their opinion as well as some nice bonuses which will make them smile. Business is doing good and we're preparing new nice suprises :)”

“We're preparing a new project which we hope will surprise people and allow them to spend a few hours having fun. We're also developing in the board games direction as we're board games players too. So next year we plan to release a few games. The first project is Cryptic Nature which we hope will have a good start, at least we invested a lot of time and work to make a good game. [The] next Cluebox will take time, it has to be at least on the same level as the last one and such projects require a long time. So not even a hint for now, sorry!” We will all have to wait impatiently in that case for what is sure to be another fun adventure from this team. In the meantime, enjoy the immersive experience of Victorian England through the lens of Sherlock’s Camera. The experience is extremely enjoyable and full of excellent surprises and revelations, all of which are carefully hinted at with subtle clues and details about the box. There are many sequential discovery aspects, clever mechanisms, and tricky puzzles, to keep the most astute detective entertained, all wrapped up in a visually appealing homage full of references to a few of Sherlock’s greatest hits. It’s elementary!

Conan Doyle cocktail — The Conan Doyle from Tonic Bar

Sherlock Holmes did not drink cocktails, it must be admitted. He was, however, well versed in all things, including fine French wines and spirits. He was, on occasion, known to partake in certain imbibements, such as French Burgundies (particularly from Montrachet and Meursault), port wine, claret, and even Imperial Tokay. In his parlor, he might enjoy a highball of whiskey and soda (a proper cocktail) or a brandy (for medicinal purposes). Of course, his interests in alcohol were to the greater extent by way of research, to know his case subjects, and their foils, all the better.

Were Holmes and his pals at Scotland Yard still skulking about these days, they might find themselves at Tonic Bar in the heart of Edinburgh, an award winning establishment beloved by the industry. In 2008 they introduced an homage to their literary hero, the Conan Doyle cocktail, which is a regionally appropriate twist on another classic. The Corn ‘n Oil is a very old cocktail originating from 1700’s Barbados, where the two main ingredients, dark rum and falernum, were commonplace. Falernum is a richly sweet syrup made from steeped almonds, ginger and lime, which evokes those tropical flavors in any cocktail and is perfectly suited for dark rum. Commercially, John D. Taylor’s “Velvet” Falernum is a well known and accessible brand, but I made my own recently and although it was a lengthy process, the taste cannot be matched. Pairing it with smoky scotch is an outstanding idea, and if you are looking for an unusual option for the Old Fashioned, this should be elementary. Just dust off your favorite pipe, tune your violin, and don your parlor robe. Cheers.

Conan Doyle

2 oz Talisker single malt scotch

¼ oz Falernum

3 dashes whiskey barrel aged bitters

Stir ingredients with ice and strain into a favorite glass. Lemon twist preferred.

explore more:

visit the iDventure shop to purchase your own Cluebox and explore their games

The Adventure in the Cardboard Box

Sherlocks Camera

Wardrobe Malfunction

Stream of Consciousness