Last year I backed The Mysterious Package Company’s Filigree in Shadow project on Kickstarter. Even though it was the first time I’d heard of the company, I was immediately intrigued by their concept: telling stories through series of packages sent to your home. I recently received the last Filigree in Shadow package and thought it’d be fun to write up a (minimal-spoilery) post about the experience.
If you’re familiar with monthly subscription boxes, that offers a pretty good comparison for what this was like. The main difference was that this was limited to a series of five mailings, and instead of products, each mailing contained a collection of realistic documents and items that told a story together.
In terms of a meta-story for the packages, they were presented as items that were being sent by the executor of a will after a distant relative’s passing, which gave a nice rationale about why we were receiving these in the mail. Without giving too much away, the items largely composed of documents like letters and journals, with each set providing just enough info to piece together one installment of story. While most of the items were things to read, there was one particular package that required us to interact with it to piece that part of the story together.
This overarching story followed the history of an English estate as it passed through different owners’ hands. Each package introduced a new episode to the story and also gave a reason to look back at the previous items. I’d categorize the story in the mystery/suspense/pseudo-horror genre, which lent itself well to the piece-the-story-together-yourself element of receiving packages in the mail. I don’t mean to be too vague in describing this, but I don’t want to ruin anything for anyone that might stumble across this!
Overall I had a really fun time with the experience, and would recommend it for anyone interested in seeing how you can use a very unconventional medium to tell a story. They have about a dozen different experiences with a variety of themes (most of which seem to have a suspense angle just like Filigree). Alternatively, they also market themselves as a unique gift — basically signing up someone else to receive the packages as a surprise!