Introducing Dear Holmes 2.0
Dear detectives,
Since launching Dear Holmes in 2018, we’ve received a lot of feedback on what’s working in our mysteries and what isn’t. Earlier this year, we categorized this feedback and challenged ourselves to address as many common pieces of feedback in one go as we could. The end result is what we’re calling “Dear Holmes 2.0”, a collection of improvements that we think will make Dear Holmes the best offline mystery game on the market.
Here’s what we heard and what we changed:
Feedback: “I just got my first clue letter, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.”
Solution: We’re addressing this in two ways. First, in April we released a “How To Play” page, with three suggested ways to play Dear Holmes individually or with friends and family. This should be a great resource for new members or for individual members who’d like to also try solving with a group.
Second, starting last month we introduced the “Watson letter,” a cover letter that will accompany letter #1 of each mystery and explain what you’re being asked to do as a consulting detective, as well as how to enter the Featured Detective Competition.
Feedback: “Someone in my household thought my Dear Holmes was a bill and threw it out”.
Solution: This Spring, we rolled out a new envelope design with a distinctive Sherlockian logo and a more festive address section. We’ve already seen a drastic reduction in accidental discards, but we’ll continue to tweak this design based on your feedback.
Feedback: “Multiple letters arrived while I was on vacation and I can’t tell which mystery they’re from”
Solution: Our envelopes already denote where a letter falls within its mystery (e.g. “letter #2”), but later this year we’ll also be adding case numbers to your envelopes so that if you’re away for a few weeks, it’s easy to distinguish between cases.
Feedback: “I love visual clues and codes. More mysteries should include them”
Solution: We’ve heard your feedback loud and clear (even when submitted as a coded message - yeah someone did that). Codes, riddles, and visual clues make mysteries more fun, so we’re making it a priority to include them in more mysteries. Not every mystery will include all of the three, but they will be much more common in our mystery calendar going forward.
Feedback: “My letter arrived out of order”, “Mysteries take too long”, and “There are too many letters to keep up with”
Solution: When we launched Dear Holmes, we debated whether to send three clue letters per mystery or four. We decided on four, but almost immediately realized we might have made a mistake.
The time required to send five letters (including the solution) without overlapping often stretched mysteries beyond their allotted calendar month. If we mailed letters too close together, the variance in USPS delivery times meant they often arrived out of order.
And on top of it all, we heard from a lot of detectives that five envelopes was just too much to keep track of. Unfortunately, our mailing machines could only fit two sheets of paper in an envelope, and eight sheets just wasn’t enough space to produce mysteries of the complexity we desired.
Then, last year, we finally upgraded our equipment. Now we can fit three sheets into an envelope. With this upgrade, we’re officially transitioning to four-letter mysteries (three clue letters).
Going forward, your mysteries will be just as complex (thanks to the added third sheet in may letters), but the pacing should be dramatically better thanks to the consolidation to four envelopes.
A final note: To all the detectives who have sent in their feedback over the years, thank you for helping to make Dear Holmes better. We take every suggestion seriously, and we’ll be using more of your feedback to make additional improvements in the months ahead.
Sincerely yours,
Michael & The Dear Holmes Team