From the creative minds at Hungry Minds — the studio behind The Book and The Last Book — comes their latest creation. It’s simply called The Puzzle. I am starting to see a pattern in how they name things. Not the most imaginative name, sure, but after spending time with it, you quickly realise the name is the least interesting thing about it.
Hungry Minds has a habit of taking things we already understand and then quietly pulling the rug out from under us. The Puzzle is no different. It takes an activity most of us have done at some point in our lives and turns it into something that feels unfamiliar, surprising, and – most importantly – special. Whether you are an amateur or hardcore dissectionist, The Puzzle is frankly THE puzzle for you.
Puzzles, after all, started life as educational tools in the 18th century, when maps were dissected and sold as “dissected maps”. In that sense, The Puzzle feels like a worthy descendant of that idea, even if what it’s teaching you is patience, observation, and how easily your brain can be tricked.
Opening the box for the first time feels less like unboxing a product and more like uncovering something. This is a Hungry Minds hallmark, and it works just as well here. Almost immediately, it feels both new and strangely familiar — like an object you didn’t know you were missing, but somehow always wanted.
The user experience and production quality are exactly what you’d expect from Hungry Minds: excellent. Opening the box, you’re greeted by a beautifully designed card, followed by a Velcro-sealed bag containing the pieces. No cheap plastic in sight. Everything about it reinforces that odd but delightful balance of something that feels both freshly made and gently aged.
For full transparency, I am not a puzzle person. I love escape rooms, hidden compartments, and puzzles built around discovery, but traditional jigsaws have never really been my thing. My better half, on the other hand, is very much in the puzzle camp. For me once you’ve got the picture in front of you, the challenge often feels a bit… flat (yes, I went there). At least, that’s how it’s always felt to me.
The Puzzle completely obliterates that preconception.
Lift out the bag of pieces and you’ll notice two packages sitting beneath it. They’re impossible to miss, yet feel deliberately hidden. One firmly tells you not to open it until the puzzle is complete, and if you’ve experienced Hungry Minds before, you’ll know better than to ignore that instruction. The second envelope gives you permission to open it, but warns that the puzzle is more enjoyable – and more difficult -if you don’t. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that the image lives inside.
Naturally, you might be thinking: I’ll just use the box art. And yes, you can. But the box art is mostly text, and the actual image only represents a portion of the puzzle itself. You’re not being given much help here. It’s more box than art, and that feels entirely intentional.
Then there’s the artwork itself. It’s stunning. Not in a polite, “that’s a nice picture” way, but in a get-lost-in-the-details-for-far-too-long way. Every centimetre is packed with hand-drawn detail, and the Octopolis steampunk world genuinely feels alive. There are nods to Captain Nemo, Flash Gordon, and John Carter of Mars scattered throughout, and once the puzzle is complete, it’s absolutely something you’ll want to argue about hanging on your wall.
But the real twist comes when you start assembling it.
You think you know how puzzles work. Find the edge pieces. Build the border. Work your way inward. Also, great advice on how to butter bread – take care of the edges, and the middle looks after itself. Except here, that logic betrays you almost immediately. An edge piece might not actually be an edge piece at all. Familiar silhouettes can’t be trusted. Shapes lie.
Small pieces, large pieces, unusual pieces, edges that slide together, rounded edges, overlapping edges. This series of design decisions adds a new layer to the experience, and it feels more three dimensional, even though it’s very much flat on your table. You don’t approach The Puzzle in a mechanical way like other puzzles; you become engaged with the whole process. It’s challenging in a way that feels deliberate rather than frustrating, and it constantly keeps you on your toes.
In true Hungry Minds fashion, The Puzzle takes something old and gives it new life. It respects the history of puzzles while gleefully refusing to play by the rules we’ve all learned.
The real question isn’t whether you can complete The Puzzle.
It’s whether you’re ready to unlearn how you think puzzles work in the first place.
