Edaqa’s Room: Cookies Review | At the end of Pleasantvalley Lane, on the outskirts of Pleasantville, we find a pleasant lady living a pleasant house. She loves cookies. And you happen to be selling them. Kindly, step into the lounge while she gets her purse.

Date Played: 14th August 2021
Number of Players: 4
Difficulty: Medium
Time Taken: 30 minutes

The thing is, I love Edaqa’s Room escape room games. From playing Prototype earlier this year, and Carnival last November… Each time we somehow manage to have buckets of fun! The artwork, the quirky puzzles, the fun gaming platform. All just…

*chef’s kiss*

So on teaming up with Escaping the Closet and our friend Tasha, we were excited to give Edaqa’s free game Cookies a go. It being free to play makes it a perfect ‘starter game’, and an example of what you can expect from their other, full priced games.

A delicious puzzle beside a cozy fireplace

The story of Cookies is very simple. You’re selling cookies and you come across a lovely old lady’s house. She’s so excited to see your cookies, that she invites you in to wait in the front room while she goes to find her purse. How lovely!

Except… The game’s tag line is “Are you her favourite flavour?” which sets the scene up for something a little more sinister than an innocent old lady buying some cookies off you. As you poke around her front room you quickly realise that you’re locked in. A few more clues and something very dreadful is about to happen… Quick! Better find a way out before she returns!

The game is shorter than Edaqa’s average room and takes place in just one location – the little old lady’s front room, complete with cats, blankets, a lovely fireplace, and paintings on the wall. While trying to find a way out, you’ll rummage through her belongings (a bit rude, eh?), unlock cupboards, and examine her shelves a lot closer for clues.

Just like Edaqa’s other experiences, the whole game looks and feels a lot like a 90s point-and-click adventure game, complete with interactable elements and a lot of very amusing humour. Yep, I definitely clicked on the joke items a lot more than the average player, but the tongue-in-cheek humour Edaqa’s Room is infamous for just can’t be beat.

Time to be a smart cookie

In terms of puzzles, they follow the same point-and-click format you may be used to from other at-home escape rooms launched over lockdown. You point at things, you click things, and so on. There’ll be buttons to discover, dials to spin, cupboards to unlock, items to collect, paintings to examine and so on. The best part is that you can see in real time what all other players are doing in the same space as you, with occasional nudges such as:

“Tasha has collected a flower” or “Al has solved the Window Puzzle”

One of my favourite puzzles involved a rather creative cabinet lock, the but sound puzzle was also fairly ingenius. The one tip I can offer is to make sure you click everything – we almost missed a few items as we hadn’t clicked on them, so click everything! You never know what might be interactable.

There was one puzzle in the game that felt a little out of place, and this involved outside knowledge which is generally a bit of a ‘no-no’ in the escape room world. I don’t want to give too many spoilers, but essentially we were presented with a scene, and had to say where the scene was. Except, none of our players recognised it at all – likely it’s quite famous, but the puzzle went over our head. After some very creative Googling I eventually figured it out, but it did cost us a lot of time.

Cookies: The Verdict

On balance, Cookies was a fantastic game. And… Err… Did I mention it’s free?! Considering how much fun you’ll get out of the game, we were seriously impressed. I’ll also forgive it any minor tech blips or puzzle confusion for the fact it’s one of the best at-home escape room experiences you can play for the least amount of money… No money!

But of course, if you enjoy it you’re absolutely encouraged to go and purchase one of Edaqa’s Rooms other games which was just as brilliant.

Cookies can be played for free by heading to Edaqa’s Room’s website here.

Ratings