Breakout Unboxed: The Wizard’s Apprentice

Do you posses Magic within you? Are you ready to go on an epic magical journey to find out. Maybe you are the next Wizard’s Apprentice!

Rating: Magical
Completion Time: 1hr 45 mins
Date Played: 20th March 2021 – 22nd March 2021
Party Size: 1
Recommended For: Families, Enthusiasts and real life Wizards.

The Wizard’s Apprentice is a simply MAGICAL play at home game perfect for families, aspiring witches and wizards, or pretty much everyone growing bored with lockdown and looking for something more interesting to do *cough cough* it’s me. Despite the fact I massively messed up the order of the puzzles (more on this later), the game still managed to be a complete delight, packed with “aha!” puzzles and, dare I say it, real magic?

The Story

Your story begins with a mysterious letter from your great, great, great (more greats) grandmother, a powerful witch of her own right who needs your help. As a descendent, you hold the potential for great power yourself – but first, with the help of this box, you must learn to use it. By harnessing your own magical abilities, it’s your job to find the long lost Power Spell.

The Exciting Stuff

So this game is really special in one particular way… Unlike every other magic-themed play at home game I’ve ever done, this one actually IS magical. No seriously, let me explain. There are a couple of really, really clever puzzles in this that feel just like you’ve just done a pretty cool spell. I don’t want to spoil it too much, but with a wave of a wand and the touch of my hand this game let me reveal unseen things and read the minds of others.

Another fun part about the game is the overarching puzzle. It’s *whispers* a logic puzzle! The game works in this wonderful way where each individual puzzle you solve adds up to one larger, logic based puzzle and if you know me you know I love drawing logic grids. This ticked all the boxes!

I also loved the modern touches. It’s 2021 people, of course wizards have websites! Did you know you can mail order your wands and broomsticks online? Well, this game also introduces you to that side of the wizarding world. A great touch!

In fact, I loved it so much I actually wish I hadn’t done this solo. I’ve got an 11 year old brother on the other side of the city who would ADORE this, but thanks to lockdown I had to settle for sharing the “wow moments” with the ‘big kids’ people I live with instead. Even though I say it would be great for families – aren’t we all just big kids inside?

My ‘Oops’ Part

Okay so here goes… How I royally messed up! And please, take this with a pinch of salt, because your experience probably won’t be quite like this:

Within the box there are two envelopes locked with a padlock. Somehow, I got into the second one first, did all of those puzzles first, and then hit a massive roadblock. To this moment I can’t say if it was my mistake or not, but I’m giving the game the benefit of the doubt. I have a track record of rushing into puzzles in the wrong order.

After contacting Breakout Unboxed for help, they got back to me fairly quickly and from here I realised my error, oops! Even after fixing it, I HAD messed up the flow of the game a bit – I mean no major disaster but it’s worth mentioning.

One example of this was a puzzle involving shields and maths. With only 4 shields and 4 possible mathematical symbols I deduced the answer before finding the actual key (hidden in the envelope I should already have opened) to solve the puzzle.

Another example was a potions puzzle. I didn’t have the recipe yet (you guessed it, it’s in the envelope), but as only some ingredients were able to be mixed with others, there was a finite amount of solutions and I guessed it correctly. Emphasis on ‘guessed’.

The best part about the game though? Despite my major mistake I still had such a good time solving everything! All it meant was that I overthought a couple of puzzles more than they should have done. So here’s a golden nugget of advice playing The Wizard’s Apprentice: You can also mess up and still have a great time. That’s testament to it being a great experience.

Overall

So overall, a good time was had by all! A delightful game, despite my oopsie! I had a nice time completing the puzzles spread out across a Saturday morning and a Monday afternoon. Plus, it comes packaged in a really nice and robust box AND now I have a gorgeous wand to keep as well? Despite being a Harry Potter fan I’ve never owned a wand before, eek!

In a rare one for The Escape Roomer, I realised I don’t feature my own face in this blog enough, so here’s a snap of yours truly, enjoying the game:

The Wizard’s Apprentice can be purchased for £27 on Breakout Unboxed’s website here.