If you are reading these lines it means that you would like to find out a little bit more about the puzzles, story and how they came to be. In that case, we have some interesting facts, stories and some current day news for you. Just read on!
However, what comes next is rich in spoilers about the game and story – so if you haven’t fully played it yet, PLEASE go back and play it first! We think that you will enjoy what comes next even more that way.
So go on! Solve the game! We’ll wait for you, promise!
— SPOILERS AHEAD —
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Done? SOLVED? Wonderful! So, pop out your reading glasses and off we go!
There are stories for games that we come up with in the heat of the moment, while others have been brewing in our minds since the very beginning of us creating puzzle games. The story in this game is one that we knew we wanted to do since probably over half a year.
In 2019 Anuj planned the most amazing Safari for the two of us in the Tanzanian part of the Serengeti. While it started off rough (last minute flight cancellations while on the way there) it turned out to be absolutely amazing – something we are both looking forward to hopefully repeating one day. But while the lockdowns are in place, and the pandemic is not fully under control, we thought we’ll create an imaginary trip to Tanzania – one that we wanted to share with *YOU*.
One way we thought it will be most immersive for our players to believe that you are in Africa, was through the character of Solomon – your driver and local guide in the game. He is actually based on the driver and endless knowledge base about the Serengeti during our visit to Tanzania (but will stay anonymous in our stories). He was a very patient, always smiling person, who didn’t mind explaining to Orsi even the funniest questions – like what’s the difference between a Cheetah and a Leopard, or a Gazelle and an Impala (she’s not proud of not having known, but she owns up to her mistakes and shortcomings, so that you can be smarter).
The part of the story where Solomon offers you Hyena curry, actually happened to us in real life. For the day tours your hotel will pack you food for lunch, and on the first day, as our driver opened up the containers with food, he pulled this prank on us. The only thing we can say is, he laughed way more than Solomon did in the game.
To give you an idea of how well these guides know the Serengeti, we would like to share a small story here. During an outing you are basically waiting to get lucky and see “some animals” – or at least that’s what it feels like to the unexperienced passengers in the car. Once, our driver brought the car to a screeching stop, and then reversed, saying that he noticed an Elephant on the right, between the bushes and trees. It was our first day, and we *really* didn’t believe him. I mean: you would NOTICE if there was an Elephant close by, right?! Well, suffice to say, our driver was right, and we went crazy taking pictures of the poor thing just enjoying a light lunch. While our cameras kept clicking, our driver started laughing. We both got curious, and asked him what the matter was, to which he sheepishly said: “there is a Giraffe on the left side of the road”.
Do we need to say it, or can you kind of deduce by now that we did NOT see a Giraffe, until we drove up a bit more, and our driver pretty much spoon fed the Giraffe’s head’s location to us. We felt really funny for not having noticed it, but that is the whole point of this anecdote; the people who work in the Serengeti have a connection to the animals and nature around them that us tourists just cannot understand.
When we say that we knew we wanted to make this game for over 6 months, we mean in general something in the Serengeti, something about the wildlife and the Maasai people. We didn’t really know the full story. To tell you the truth, the story kept changing for a loooong time. Eventually we thought that we wanted to try something new for one of our stories, and maybe working with a cryptid would be fun. For those who are curious, Anuj was a budding cryptozoologist in his younger days and was obsessed with learning about these legendary creatures. The inspiration for the Kongamato came up because of that.
But when we figured out that we want to work in the idea of the Kongamato – a real African cryptid by the way – we knew we had to try our luck at asking Crack-a-Nut Mysteries and S.O.U.P to let us create this never-before seen crossover of puzzling universes. We were so happy when Angela Scott, the creator of Crack-A-Nut Mysteries said a happy ‘OK’. We really can’t express how exciting that was. If you haven’t played S.O.U.P yet, we strongly encourage you to! It’s a lovely puzzle game, which even comes with a personalized a membership card! Even the founding members of the Enigma Fellowiship are active members of S.O.U.P.
Monsters in the Wild was our first foray into doing a puzzling universe crossover, but we had so much fun with it that we’re hoping that we will be able to properly collaborate on a game with Crack-A-Nut and other creators out there to build a larger connected universe. Stay tuned. We think some cool things are in store for the future.
Years ago, there was a spate of sightings of a creature called the Monkey Man in India — while Anuj was growing up. This was a Bigfoot like creature, which eventually turned out to be a hoax. But during this time Anuj worked with the famous cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, a Bigfoot expert, while tracking this story. This was probably one of the things that made him ever so interested in cryptids and the not-yet discovered wild creatures of our world. To tell you the truth, he is just a real animal guy (in spite of the fact that he has no pets at the moment – but he says that living next to a bird sanctuary makes up for it since he gets to see all manner of birds all day long). His parents have always nurtured, loved and cared for all kind of animals – be that doggos, rabbits, deer, pashmina goats or cows – and that really got engrained in Anuj. He is the kind of person who will make good friends with any stray dogs, even the ones that look scary to his terrified wife, Orsi. So you can see how the overall story – the animals and the cryptid – were something that we enjoyed so much making this game about.
Let’s talk about the props. The fliers and the Bao board were the first things we knew for sure we wanted to have in the game. We wanted it to really feel like you were going on a Safari and these felt like they would add a bit of the realism. In the early stages we even thought about adding some postcards (since they were so beloved in Lost Knowledge) but unfortunately they just didn’t fit into the story. However much we tried to sneak them in, they always felt a bit forced. Even though Anuj had made such lovely designs for them!!!
Postcard designs made for the game
Luckily, we were able to show some of the pictures that would have become postcards on the cover of the “encyclopedia”. These pictures were actually taken by us – though we can’t remember anymore which one was taken by who. Anuj’s absolute favorite is the monkey (note from Anuj: which he took — and it always makes him feel like he was/is having a conversation with an old sage of the wilderness). Which one did you like the most?
Another item that we wanted to include at a point was tickets for a Balloon Safari that Matt would have gone on while he was visiting Camp Sinyati. But again, things just didn’t come into the story naturally and it felt like we were adding material that didn’t need to be there. Perhaps we will take you on a Hot Air Balloon ride in a future game? Stay tuned.
While the general information of the fliers came together relatively quickly, the rest took relatively long. Everything considered, it took Anuj a full week of work per flyer to get them to this printed version. We went back and forth with how we wanted to make the maps, how they should fit together, and in general just what it should look like? I mean, we are in the Serengeti; it’s not like there are roads there, and the animals are on a continuous migration cycle, so not too much is set in stone. Besides the landscape, that is. In addition, the ever changing story made it hard to nail down all the details on these components.
We hope you enjoyed the puzzled at the three villages. We did a deep dive into the Maasai culture to gather enough information for the puzzles. We knew we’d want to make them about the necklace, the shuka and the shield – these objects are really some of the most important culturally to the Maasai people – we just didn’t know what we wanted to make them about. The sad truth is that the shields used to really carry a lot of information about the owner, as well as their village, but over the decades that information just disappeared. It is now lost to the eons past. We tried to find as many pictures of old shields as we could, and if you can see, we tried our level best to create shields which incorporated patterns and colors from these. We wanted to give these tools the importance they used to carry once upon a time, when the Maasai warriors would have to fend off a Lion to earn their names, as a rite of passage. But, as we said in on the flier as well, these days the Maasai protect the Lions. An interesting custom they have to still remember the old times is the Maasai Olympics.
Surprisingly enough, there is no known meaning to the patterns in their shukas – it’s just something the Maasai have been doing since centuries. But besides this very typical, and colorful cloth, the Maasai use one more fabric: the mud-cloth. Can you believe, that in the first versions of the puzzles, we wanted you to figure out which plants to gather to paint a shuka into a particular color combination? But we thought it would be too much to read and that’s not what this kind of a puzzle game should be about – so we moved on to the Maasai seasons.
You might not know this, but the name of the last tribe, Nalangu, is a proper Maasai name. It means “those who came from another tribe”. We thought this was so fitting for a game played by so many people around the world. Anuj found this name, and we just fell in love with it. Sooooo, we had to create a puzzle which would reveal this name to you. Once we came up with the basic words, that could give us the letters we needed, we made the other shields, and made up the names for the other tribes that fit Maasai name patterns — but only Nalangu is the real Maasai name.
What did you think about the art in the game? A lot of it was hand-drawn by Orsi. The shuka, necklace and shields were drawn, scanned in, colors applied and even some fancy filter work done on the computer to make them pop. We really wanted to convey the colorful nature of Maasai culture with this game, and hope that our limited artistic abilities were able to translate some of that over to you. Neither of us is an artist or very skilled with making art (except the musical variety), so getting this game together was an even bigger challenge than usual since we had to create things that would accurately represent cultural aspects of the Maasai and feel authentic when it came to other materials in the game. It took a lot of work, but each time we look at the materials now, we feel really happy. Did you like any particular item? Do let us know!
As you might know by now, we really like to put in a break around the middle of the game. We think this takes the pressure off the players. No need to have to push through because there is no other way to finish. In this game, all the puzzles and the general story came together relatively quickly for the first half of the game. The second half however was a different story. We had a hard time figuring out how to introduce the character of Matt, the reporter. First we thought we’d find a piece of broken equipment at one of the Kongamato attack sites, which would then lead you to him eventually. We even thought about going out in the dark and taking staged Kongamato pictures that you would find on a damaged camera that fell off when the Kongamato itself was used to “kidnap” him. Then we had him on the run from Gordon Clark, since he wrote an article about the Scattered Cards incident – doing a special in-depth take down of the big mafia man, and eventually he was taken hostage. Oh, it was not easy. But once we brought in the old Oloibon, who then asks you to look into his friend who disappeared, it aaaaall made sense. Sometimes, life isn’t all complex connections and just throws odd coincidental things. As such, it just felt natural for such a kind spirit to look out for a crazy reporter sleeping in his tent, alone in the middle of the wilderness (btw, it truly is possible to camp out in the Serengeti or even on unguided tours yourself — we don’t recommend you do this, especially if you are new to it).
We got acquainted with the Bao board in Tanzania, but we ultimately returned from our safari without any souvenirs – minus the couple of bags of coffee that we had to carry to prolong the flavor of the vacation even after returning to work. So we ended up buying a Bao board shortly after our return, and every time we look and play with it, it always brings back happy memories. That being said, Bao is not just spread everywhere in Tanzania or Africa, but other parts of the world as well. It is part of the Mancala family of games that can be found almost everywhere in the world. In the actual game, a single ‘hole’/’pit’ is called a ‘cattle corral’ by the Meru and the Maasai in Africa. In India it is called a ‘shop’, while in Java it is a ‘rice field’. Most cultures even use the same concepts of sowing and reaping things in a Bao game. In fact, this game is so old that one of the earliest references of it have been found in modern day Eritrea from as far back as 500 CE. For the purpose of our puzzle we have changed the rules of the game, and even shortened the board. We did this to simplify things a little and also in order to be able to place the alphabet on it. So before you try to beat a real old Oloibon at this game, maybe read the proper, local rules for the game.
We were both looking forward to seeing the wildlife in Africa even before we got onto the first flight, but Orsi also had something a bit more unusual on her list of “to see” things: a Baobab tree. This was one of the most impressive things that stuck with her from geography classes from as far back as middle school, and she was literally brought to tears, when our driver took us to a giant baobab tree – on our first day! So these amazing and enormous things, which are also called trees of life, had to make their way into the game as well.
Orsi with the great Baobab Tree
Another puzzle in the game that got its inspiration from Orsi is the crossword puzzle in the end. The format you see there is the most popular crossword puzzle in Hungary – which she enjoys playing as well (even if she has to use a lot of hints a lot of times). We discovered that it’s called a Swedish type puzzle, or arrow-word puzzle. We found this website had daily challenges, if you are interested in trying your hand at them.
If you listen to our audio recordings to keep up with the story, then you know that we collaborate with voice actors. However this time, we had a very special read-in from none other than Angela Scott – the real head of S.O.U.P.! She is actually the one who invites you to join them in solving interesting mysteries. How cool is that? Nothing could convince you more to join an agency, than the leader themselves recruiting you, am I right? So we urge you to check out Crack-a-Nut Mysteries and use the coupon from this game to get a discount on your copy of S.O.U.P. Did you know that she personalizes every game before sending it out?
While most of the research for this game was really fun, at one point we stumbled upon something that changed everything for us. Yes, we always knew that there is a fake Kongamato that is used to steal animals. And yes, they were always supposed to be transported to their greedy new owners overseas. But we never thought that something much worse is happening in the Serengeti (and probably not only there) since the Covid lockdowns. We found a video (and then a lot more) that made the hair on our backs stand up. It turned out that we were actually writing a fictional story that was not too far from reality. Due to the extremely low numbers of tourists, there is no income in the Serengeti. There are not enough funds for keeping all the wildlife rangers employed anymore, and poachers know this. The number of animals being poached in the Serengeti sky rocketed since lockdown.
It would have been very easy to make the local people greedy in our game. But that would not have been the truth. Even in these tough times there are many dedicated Maasai, rangers and other locals who are doing their best to protect wildlife. It was the real loss of opportunities which caused this situation, and we hope that the story was able to convey that to our players.
Once we found out about the sharp increase in poaching, we really felt like this wasn’t just a game anymore. That’s why, like never before, we started a fundraiser, that we hope at least some of you will be able to contribute towards. But don’t feel bad if you cannot. Just take a little effort, and spread the word about it, or help someone around you: sometimes a simplest things like a smile, or just listening to someone make all the difference in the world. Especially during the trying times the entire world has had to face.
Thanks for reading through! Send us a message on Facebook, Instagram or just an email to let us know what you thought about the game! We always love to hear from you guys.
Take care, dear Enigma Fellowship member. Stay safe and healthy! Until next time.
