In this time of lockdown and social distancing the Scare Directory team are looking for activities to keep us entertained. The Pandora Network, a collaboration between Faceless Ventures, Incognito Experiences and Nick Hutson Music was just that. A week-long murder mystery experience taking place online through Facebook.

The whole team managed to take part in this experience, each having different experiences that we will try and summarise below.

Steven managed to interact with the experience quite a bit, so the bulk of the review will be from his perspective.

The Experience

During the week, the team and many others of our 25-ish strong group had several online conversations with the two field agents who were in situ in the town of Pondermere and were able to act as the eyes and ears for those of us in the online analyst community. Through them we were able to respond to what they had unearthed, posting our own theories, asking them questions to follow up on and give suggestions as to where to go next in the investigation.

As with all immersive events with interactive elements, we found that the more you put in, the more you get out of it. In a normal in person event that has a short set time span, it’s relatively easy, self-confidence aside, to do so, free from external distractions. In an online only environment that’s much trickier, especially as you may have several fellow agents all posting multiple potentially divergent ideas throughout the day.

The amount of time spent delving in to the world of Pondermere, apart from one fun mid-week activity, decreased slightly over the course of the mystery, which is understandable given that there are likely to be multiple investigative strands to follow at the start, but as these converged or theories were eliminated the same sense of agency at the start of the week wasn’t there towards the end.

Personal Perspectives

Steven

As someone that has a lot of free time during the current lockdown, I was looking forward to this initial instalment of The Pandora Network. Not only would it be a welcome bit of entertainment, but I knew I could put in more time if needed to help solve this mystery. As such I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and stayed very engaged with the evolving nature of the interactive whodunnit.

I found the frequency, depth and variety of these interactions with the field agents to be really good, with plenty new to respond to and the personal nature of many of the online chats and in particular some of the messages to be a really nice touch and helped with the sense of immersion. The other aspect is of course chatting with your fellow online analyst agents about the case and bouncing ideas and theories off one another. These interactions helped to set up the town of Pondermere and how this may evolve in future instalments..

That said I didn’t sink masses of time in to the experience, probably on average about half an hour to an hour each day, but I did dip in and out multiple times a day, usually whenever a new piece of information came to light. This helped me to keep on top of not only the work of the field agents, but also to easily keep track of what everyone else was saying.

I’ll certainly be keen to don my mac, fedora and shades again to delve in to the mysterious world of Pondermere and its secrets

Ashley

Due to various external factors I struggled to keep up with the frantic theorising of the ‘agents’. While not having time to interact much in the experience I thoroughly enjoyed reading what others thought and experiencing the multimedia elements throughout the week. It was great to see people speculating and searching the web for additional historical facts that might help solve the case. I particularly enjoyed the summary of the week’s events at the end, this rounded things off well with great production value and storytelling that even without as much focus during the week was an enjoyable piece of media.

Even without the heavy interaction I still found the event enjoyable and would recommend the experience, especially to those who have the free time to fully engage with the process. The storyline was gripping and interesting to follow throughout the week.

Josie

I’m a massive murder mystery fan and was really intrigued by the experience and how it would be run. Overall, it was clear how much time and effort had been put into running the experience and the variation of interactions, including Facebook posts, pictures and audio, was very well done and kept a good pace. The experience could benefit from a clear outline of the anticipated time commitment and an indication of the number of people who will be taking part at the booking stage so that all participants can prepare themselves appropriately. Myself, like Ash, found the pace of the experience hard to keep up with due to the current circumstances, number of participants and posts, however overall it was an excellent experience which was fun and well executed.

Summary

All in all, we really enjoyed this experience. It was a welcome change and something different than many of the online only experiences completed during the lockdown and for the price we thought was great value. It was an excellent idea for a fun event to do with friends during lockdown as you can theorise together or part of the wider group.

Keep an eye out on The Pandora Network Facebook Page for details of any future mysteries.

Scare Directory
Author: Scare Directory