Summer camp turns murderous in this new murder mystery box by Hunt A Killer! The Game Night Gods’ team were lucky enough to receive the Camp Calamity Hunt A Killer box ahead of release so that we could make an in depth Camp Calamity review for you to read before you dive in!
Hunt A Killer is releasing this new box in August on, wait for it, Friday the 13th. Oh how I already have chills. I remember going to camp when I was younger and sitting around the campfire, telling scary stories. Well, these scary stories turn real, as one of the camp counselors’ charred remains are found in the embers of last night’s bonfire.
It is your job to use the contents within the murder mystery box in order to review suspects’ statements and comb through evidence to determine the means, motives, and opportunities of each suspect. As you make your way through the box, you will solve puzzles that will test your critical thinking, powers of deduction, and code cracking skills. Certain components will help to eliminate suspects until you are left with only one.
This Camp Calamity box is perfect for game night and date night! Do you have what it takes to solve the murder? See if this box is for you by continuing on in this Camp Calamity review.
Disclaimer: This is our honest opinion in our own words. Honesty is very important to us and we make sure that we only review and recommend products we would use ourselves and fully enjoy.
What is Camp Calamity by Hunt A Killer
Camp Calamity is an all-in-one box by Hunt A Killer that takes about 3-5 hours to solve. We recommend playing with a group as you will work together to solve a murder mystery by looking at clues and solving puzzles in order to eliminate suspects.
If you are not familiar with the company Hunt A Killer, we’ll give you a brief overview…
Hunt A Killer is a murder mystery subscription box service where your role is to become a detective and work to solve a crime. Specifically, the crime involves a murder with many different unique suspects.
Normally, you subscribe to Hunt A Killer and you are put into a ‘season’ that lasts 6 months. You receive a box each month and the mystery is solved after the sixth box. It is your duty to sort through clues and evidence to eliminate one suspect (or more) per episode/box.
However, with the Camp Calamity box, everything you need to solve the mystery is within one box. So you won’t be subscribing to a whole season. Instead, you will have an all-in-one experience that you can solve in one night!
Therefore, you will eliminate suspects along the way and determine the killer using all of the clues and puzzles hidden within the box. At the end of the night, you should be certain who the killer is and will find out if you were right or wrong by using Hunt A Killer’s website to check your final verdict!
Opening Hunt A Killer’s Camp Calamity Premium Box
When we received the Camp Calamity box in the mail, it was shipped within another box and had no damage whatsoever. We were happy about this, as we have had bad luck in the past with damaged shipments!
The box intrigued us as it looked different from other boxes we have received from Hunt A Killer. It had fun artwork on the outside and really gave us that whole “camp” vibe that we were hoping for.
After receiving the box, we were ready to dive in! We got together the team and some friends for a game night and put on our detective hats. We were so freaking excited!
We opened the Camp Calamity Premium Box and were pleasantly surprised by the contents within. It was more than we expected, since the box was so light and thin when we received it in the mail.
When we opened the box, we noticed some cool components, such as a a lighter, playing cards, and documents. But this was just the beginning of all of the items that we would later discover as we continued to dig deeper.
You will also notice a postcard listing all of the items contained in the box. Double check to make sure you have everything, or else you may be missing out on some important clues. If you happen to be missing something, then Hunt A Killer will gladly replace any missing items. This has never happened to us, so I wouldn’t worry too much!
The box contains 22 items in total, including:
- The Camp Counselor’s Letter
- A Manila Envelope with a Bunch of Items (Paper documents, bracelet, map, arrowhead, bandana, etc.)
- Notes
- Lighter
- Playing Cards
- Photos
- Window Stickers
- Camp Menu
- and more!
On the other side of the postcard, there are instructions on how to complete this all-in-one experience. It’s important to note that if you ever get stuck, you can visit the Hunt A Killer site in order to get hints on any puzzles and clues.
During the course of the game, you will examine all documents and items for clues. You will also have the opportunity to check the virtual desktop on your computer for additional evidence. As you gather clues and decipher messages, you will create profiles on each of the suspects and a timeline of all events leading up to the murder.
You will be working with camp counselor, Jemma, via a messenger chat box. As you work through the investigation with her, you will hopefully discover the killer and submit your final answer. You will either receive a congratulatory response if you are correct, or a message asking to try again if you are wrong.
We quickly skimmed through the instruction booklet, eager to start analyzing the clues and objects within the box. Like other Hunt A Killer boxes we have completed, we discovered that there is no apparent order or ‘right way’ to really start, but we found that the best starting point for us was to read the letter that was located within the box.
This letter contained important information about the box and was written by Jemma, one of the camp counselors who has enlisted you to help solve the mystery.
As you continue to read on, we want you to know that we made it a point to make sure this Hunt A Killer review is spoiler free. We don’t want to ruin the fun, so we promise to only let you know our personal experience and game flow during our crime scene investigation, without spoiling anything. We will not name any suspect’s names or give away any clues.
An Introduction to Camp Calamity
We started by reading the letter enclosed in the Camp Calamity box. The letter was written by Jemma, a camp counselor at Camp Ashburne. She stated that something terrible has happened at the summer camp. She found the body of Brad, one of her fellow counselors, three days ago in the campfire pit. Yikes!
She gave us some more information about her background and more details about the “Pit Party” that the counselors and staff attend between camp sessions. Jemma stumbled upon the campfire pit the morning after and noticed her fellow camp counselor burned to death. This is where the scene of the crime happened.
Brad’s death was declared an accident by police, but Jemma thinks otherwise. She found some odd things in Brad’s belongings and remembers some odd events happening before that night. She explains more in her letter that she has grown suspicious and has decided to enlist our help in determining what actually happened that night.
Jemma put together a box of Brad’s belongings, as well as papers and momentos to send to us. She also told us that we can access the files on the Main Office computer desktop. We had everything we need in order to start sorting through clues and solving this mystery once and for all.
We couldn’t help but feel for Jemma as she stated in one of the last lines of her letter, “Ever since I found Brad’s body, I’ve been walking around camp like I don’t even recognize it, like the places I thought were my home actually belong to somebody else.”
We were determined to help her find out what really happened to Brad!
Using Clues & Solving the Mystery
Now that we were given an overview of what Jemma has already put together at Camp Ashburne, it was time for us to do our own digging. We quickly started giving out different documents and items to our team members to start looking at.
We noticed on the manilla envelope, there was written text from Jemma stating to look through this envelope after reading her letter. She compiled a bunch of items that she found around camp that might be relevant to the investigation.
These items included an arrowhead, counselor cork board notes, a card, a bracelet, and a banana. These were all physical items that we could hold in our hands. We were amazed about the quality of the physical items within the box.
The arrowhead was solid and made of real rock. We were shocked about how realistic it felt. The bracelet was made with real rope, beads, and a shell that seemed to be plucked right off of the beach. I was very tempted to wear the bracelet around for the rest of the night. The staff bandana was made of decent quality and seemed like a great souvenir to have, even if it didn’t contain any clues.
One of us began reading through the booklet that contained the camp notes. This booklet was packed with so much information. Everything was handwritten and hearing the testimonials and stories of the members of Camp Ashburne was something we enjoyed. We began profiling suspects and noticed that there were 8 people involved in the night of the campfire party.
We knew that we would have to eliminate suspects using all of the provided clues and hoped that we would be left with only one suspect remaining.
We started putting together some of the physical items and pairing them with things we heard from the camp notes. As we started making our way through different puzzles, we were pleasantly surprised about how clever the clues were and the level of difficulty these puzzles were. They were indeed challenging, but not to the point where we wanted to pull our hair out.
Some of the puzzles kept revealing more and more secrets that we used to continue through our investigation. We won’t go into too much detail about the clues as we do not want to spoil anything and want everyone to go in with an open mind.
Click here to check out more on information on Hunt A Killer’s website!
Working Through Digital Clues
A really cool aspect of this box is the opportunity to use the computer in order to access the Camp Ashburne’s desktop computer. Here we were able to access digital clues and folders that contained important information.
There were a bunch of files that we could look at and analyze on the computer. It was nice to have both a physical and digital aspect to this investigation.
We even were live chatting with Jemma as we were solving the case. It was so cool! Jemma provided us with the password for her personal folder, but all of the other folders were password protected. We knew that we would have to decipher clues in order to open these folders and discover more clues.
Finding Suspects Around Camp Calamity
As we gathered more information, we were able to eliminate some staff members as suspects, as well as put others on our high radar for suspects. We took it upon ourselves to write notes down in a notebook and try to connect the dots of different relationships of staff members. I highly recommend keeping everything organized and writing things down.
There were tons and tons of information on all of the Camp Ashburne staff. We had plenty of information that helped us profile all of the individuals and really dive deep into their personalities.
Once we felt comfortable with reading through all of the clues and analyzing all of the documents, we took about a half hour to discuss all of our findings together in order to come to a final conclusion on the identity of the killer.
The Game Night Gods’ team ran through all of the notes we took and looked over some of the documents we deemed important a few times, as well as the physical evidence that was provided.
We discussed each person and whether we believed what they were saying and analyzed our findings about each staff member. After a lot of discussion, we all agreed on one person who we knew had to be the killer.
On our computer, we were ready to chat with Jemma and tell her what we found. We knew that we would either receive a congratulatory message if we were right, or we would receive a message to try again.
We entered the name of who we thought the killer was and… we were right! It felt so good that we all agreed on that one person and we were right about it! Even though we don’t know Jemma, we were happy that we were able to help solve the case and find Brad’s murderer.
I bet you can already tell that we love this box, so we hope that we were able to give you enough information to determine if this box is for you. If so, then you can use the link below to purchase your own box!
Click here to get your Camp Calamity box from Hunt A Killer’s website today!
How Much Does Camp Calamity Cost?
The premium box set Camp Calamity costs $59.99. A select handful of people were able to preorder the box for $10 off. The Camp Calamity box released on August 13th 2021 for $59.99.
Is Camp Calamity worth the cost? Our short answer is… HELL YES. The amount of items within the box that you receive makes the box worth it and the whole experience pays for itself.
As you have read above, we were fully immersed in this box and did not want to stop until we decoded all of the clues and found Brad’s killer. We are sure that you will have a great time too!
Click here to get your Camp Calamity box from Hunt A Killer’s website today!
How to Purchase the Camp Calamity Box
To purchase the Camp Calamity premium box set from Hunt A Killer’s website, click here. Then click the dropdown that says “Games” and click on “Premiums.” You will then see the “Camp Calamity” box that you can click on and add to your cart.
If you have trouble locating the box on Hunt A Killer’s website, then you can always send us a message and we will be glad to help point you in the right direction.
How Long Does Camp Calamity Take to Complete?
According to the box, Camp Calamity takes about 3-5 hours to complete, but we completed it in about 3 and a half hours. Keep in mind, we did have 5 people helping us out the whole time, so we were able to cover more ground in less time.
It did take us longer than expected, but the whole experience gave us our money’s worth and we were happy with how the game played out.
Click here to get your Camp Calamity box from Hunt A Killer’s website today!
Camp Calamity Review – is it worth it?
I would admit that the contents within the box are very overwhelming at first, but once you start diving in, it was hard to not want to solve it all the way to the very end.
Compared to other Hunt A Killer boxes/subscriptions, we found this box a bit tedious. We aren’t necessarily saying it’s a bad thing, but since it is an all-in-one experience, you literally have EVERYTHING you need to solve the whole mystery within one box. This meant that instead of getting rid of 1 or 2 suspects per box, we had to get rid of 7 suspects.
At times, we took some breaks because our minds needed a rest, but we were able to complete the whole box in one night. This tells us that the box is challenging, but not challenging enough where we wanted to give up.
Yes, we said the box was a bit overwhelming at first and was a bit tedious, but this does not mean we didn’t have a blast. We were fully immersed within the Camp Calamity box and were very pleased with the contents within it.
With all of this being said, we would definitely recommend this box to anyone that loves mysteries and wants to be fully immersed in an investigation.
We would love for you to join the Hunt A Killer community and start your own journey with the Hunt A Killer Camp Calamity box today!
Click here to get your Camp Calamity box from Hunt A Killer’s website today!