After the first time I tried Alexander Shen’s Lunch Box Lair, I asked ‘Did I miss something?’ and then ‘Is that it?’ Sadly, I fear that the answers are ‘No’ and ‘Yes’
Many of my blogs about Shen’s work are to describe hidden gems. Some describe what I feel are failures. And Lunch Box Lair is just a weird little experience that I’m not even sure if I can describe as an experiment.
Okay. Lunch Box Lair is a dungeon/maze that you build out of cards with items that you find along of the way. That’s not that weird a formula.
But here’s where it does get weird. There are no random elements. The maze cards all fit together in a specific way and and the item cards are all keyed to specific locations. I don’t even think I can call it a puzzle since there’s nothing for you to really figure out. It’s more like an unusual form of narrative. You put the pieces together and it all works out.
Shen has a collection of puzzles called Tiny Maze Things which is probably the simplest thing I’ve seen from them. In comparison, Tiny Maze Things has actual choices for you to make, which makes it far more engaging to me.
What it really reminded me of was one of those crude interactive fictions you’d program in Basic in the early 1980s that would really have only one path. Only you don’t have to fight with the syntax. It also reminds me of the Choose Your Own Adventure board games that Z-Man makes but those have a lot of choices for you.
In some ways, I don’t know if I’d call it a failure. It does what it clearly set out to do. However, that doesn’t make it interesting.
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