An evil scientist, who hates winter and snow, invents a device that is destroying all the snow in your city. You find his lost, top-secret diary, which might lead to his lab. Now you have a chance to turn off this machine and bring back the magic of winter.
Rating: Playful!
Completion Time: 30 minutes
Date Played: 9th February 2021
Party Size: 1
Recommended For: Families, Kids… Especially to play when it’s snowing!
Saving the Beauty of Winter is a beautifully illustrated family game – I said this about Houdini’s Secret Room and I’ll say it again, the look and the feel of the printed pack is 👌 ! That said, I may need to take out a mortgage on my apartment with the cost of printer ink – I’m kidding! Even so, whilst the game recommends the full pack be printed you could probably get away with just a few pages and in black and white.
The story of this adventure is one part silly, one part charming: An evil (possibly mad) scientist living in your town has decided enough is enough and has ‘cancelled winter’ with his snow reversal machine. By harnessing the powers of the great scientific minds throughout history, the evil scientist manages to stop snow from ever falling on your town again. It’s amusing to be playing from London and we almost never get snow but when we do it’s about 2 millimetres worth. Please could the scientist send all his surplus snow to London, please?
One millimetre of snow is STILL one millimetre of snow… So you bet I had a little photoshoot with this pack out in the garden! Before the snow promptly melted one hour later.
To stop the evil scientist, you must work your way through three levels of puzzles:
- Find his laboratory in the town and break in
- Enter the snow attractor
- Shut it down!
Each step is relatively straight forward – you’re looking for a code to proceed. The game recommends one person be the ‘host’ and know the answers in advance, thereby granting access to the rest of the players when answered correctly. A level up (and more authentic escape room experience) would be to hide part 2 and 3 behind locks with codes bearing those numbers – but that’s up to you! I chose instead to play this game as a solo player and checked my answer at the end of each level.
Whilst not too tricky at all, what Saving the Beauty of Winter does encourage you to do is create some very cool things with paper. Each level involves a bit of cutting, folding and sticking, with cool looking results! This is why it’d be a perfect game for a family setting giving little ones something to do with their hands whilst older ones can crack the codes and solve the puzzles!
Did I enjoy it? Yes, absolutely! I smashed through it in about 30 minutes – including some cutting and sticking time, and found the whole thing to be really rather sweet. It’s nice to have a winter escape game that isn’t explicitly about Christmas – it’s seasonal and fun for the long January and February months too!
Saving the Beauty of Winter can be purchased for $29 USD on Escape Room Geek’s website.
