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The Microchip is the latest in the “echoes” audio mystery series from Ravensburger. The game is for 1-6 players who will all have to use their wits and their ears to piece together the clues and solve the puzzle.
Setup
One person in your group will need the free Ravensburger echoes app installed on a smartphone or tablet in order to play. This is available from the App Store or Google play.
The box contains 18 item cards (with a black border on their reverse) and 6 chapter marker tiles (made from thicker card and with a glowing white border on their reverse). Set aside the 9 chapter item cards with a star-like icon showing on them for later.
You’ll solve half of the story first before moving on to the second half, where you’ll introduce the previously set aside cards.
Have one player launch the echoes app and find The Microchip content and listen to the prologue. This will give you some important background to the overall story and help you start to solve the mystery.
Listen Closely
You’ll need to correctly put all 24 parts of the story in the correct order before solving the complete puzzle.
Each item has an echo that you’ll listen to, getting clues that get you closer to unravelling the complete story. Each chapter marker tile will ultimately be placed with three item cards, forming six complete chapters.
Use your device’s camera in The Microchip to scan a card or tile to hear the echo. You can listen to echoes as many times as you need, but be warned that the story may jump around a little, so echoes may not all be directly connected to each other.
If you have difficulty scanning an item for some reason, hit the keyboard icon in the corner of the app and enter the three letter code on the back of the card to hear the echo. You can use this feature and the code PRL to go back and listen to the prologue again at any point.
As you listen to the echo of each item, try and organize the cards into a sequence, and work out which chapter tile they match up to. When you think you’ve cracked it, switch the app into ‘solve’ mode by tapping at the top.
Solving The Mystery
To begin solving the puzzle, first scan a chapter marker tile, followed by the three item cards you think are related.
Depending on the difficulty setting you have selected you’ll be given one of two ‘scores’ for the chapter.
In easy mode, each of the three item cards will be scored individually. A red X means the card belongs in a completely different chapter within the story. A blue arrow means that the item is in the right chapter, but has been scanned in the wrong order. A green tick means the item is in the right chapter and in the right place.
If you’re playing on normal difficulty, you’ll either get a score from 0-3 telling you how many items actually belong in that chapter (but without any hint about which ones are right, or in the right order).
If you’ve got everything correct, the app will congratulate you. You’ll then be able to listen to the whole chapter in one go. This potentially provides new context, missing snippets of story, or even new clues that will help you. Once you’ve listened to this, move on to solving the next two chapters in the same way
A Mystery Of Two Parts
Once you’ve matched the first nine cards to the correct chapters, and in the correct sequence, you’ll have correctly pieced together half of the story. Now you can retrieve the nine cards with the star-like icon that you set aside at the beginning and place them in front of you.
You’ll now need to repeat the process of listening to the echoes and piecing together the remaining chapters exactly as you did before.
Remember that these are not necessarily the complete second half of the story. Each echo and chapter can potentially jump around in the overall timeline of the story so don’t assume anything.
Ending The Game
Once you’ve correctly identified the contents of each chapter in the Microchip, there’s one more task – put all six parts of the story in the correct order.
To do this, make sure your app is in ‘solve’ mode, and scan only the six chapter marker tiles in order. If you’re incorrect, the app will prompt you to rescan the tiles until they’re in the right sequence.
Once you’ve correctly identified the order, you’ll be able to hear the epilogue to the story and find out how it all ends. You’ll also be able to listen to the whole thing from start to finish from the main menu of the app.