Filigree In Shadow - The Experience - First Mailing

My G0d, If I were you I'd be bouncing off the walls!!

This is my third experience in total after The Weeping Book and Tempus Fugit. In comparison to the first mailing for that experience, this is much more involved. The "human" hair....(shudder)

Forum members, I see some consternation with the "printed" versions of aging. Are there experiences that feel/look more real than these initial offerings?

Hey, we spent a lot of money so you would not put "human" in quotes there...



Every other Experience I have seen to date had the documents printed on aged, yellowed or otherwise distressed paper, so this is a departure from the usual quality we have come to expect.

I would say that in general, though not always, that their first mailings tend to be low-key and realistic and are designed to confuse unknowing recipients and hook them into wondering what this package was and who or where it could be from.  A big part of that is printing the material in such a way that it could conceivably look real, which could include things like distressing the paper it's printed on (I'm nowhere near an expert on this kind of thing, so I'm not even sure what the right terminology would be for this technique).  For example, Risen's materials feel very realistic to me, though I've seen reviews of it where people say that there were elements of one item in the second mailing that upon very close inspection revealed it to be fake, but that required experts in a certain field to be able to tell that it wasn't real.  You mentioned The Weeping Book; the printing quality on that is such that several people whom I've shown it to at first glance thought it was a real journal, and consider the cover and how realistically damaged it looks and feels.  

While some elements of this feel real (especially the drawing and of course the hair), the staining on the letters is almost glossy and is clearly printed on, which at least for me instantly kills the illusion, and I could see why someone who got this would be intrigued but would wonder whether this was some kind of Halloween related promotion or experience (I could easily see it being considered as an immersive ad for a haunted house).  I'm not saying there isn't a place for glossy print jobs in these kind of experiences, especially ones like Dispatch: Breakout that present themselves as games right away, but it's not at all what I'm used to from the MPC, and it doesn't at all compare favorably to something like Hunt A Killer, which has premium experiences at similar price points to this with extremely convincing aging done on all of the materials.

Even John Augur and Demon Jar featured authentically aged documents. With certain John Augur pieces I swear I could smell the sea water.

The move from hand-aging paper by distressing it (crumpling, ripping, and the application of tea to the edges) cannot be equaled by printed materials which try graphically to create the same effect. I call bullshit on this.