Minty Noodles: Interstellar Adventures Episode 1 | Review

In the depths of space, a cryptic signal from a previously unknown planet reaches The Atlas. On board that spaceship, Captain Silna and her crew scramble to decipher the call. What follows is an adventure that pushes the crew to confront their limits. With the mechanics of an escape room and the excitement of a choose-your-own-adventure story, Interstellar Adventures is a dynamic three-episode experience that has a role for all crew members: the code-breaker, the cartographer, and the one who just likes missiles. Using powers of logic and deduction, the crew sets out on a mission to untangle the unknown. Exploring an obscure new world, battling ravenous plants, and narrowly escaping missile attacks, our crew embarks on a quest that tests both their wits and their teamwork skills, while also making them second-guess everything they thought they knew.

Date Played: September 2025
Time Taken: ~30 minutes
Number of Players: 1
Difficulty: Easy

It’s Kickstarter week! No, but for real. You wait the longest time for a good puzzle Kickstarter then they all suddenly come along at once. Much to the chagrin of my bank account. But the one I’m most excited about this week is a name you might not have some across before – Minty Noodles. This company is the brain child between the designer Harriet Cody, and co-owner Cole Jeffries who is known for having works on the detective game Shadows of Doubt. In short, intriguing!

Interstellar Adventures is a light-hearted, boxed tabletop puzzle game best designed for a family audience. It exists in a world that is somewhere between Star Trek, and one of my favourite sci-fi series ever – Becky Chambers’ the Galactic Commons series. It plays a little like an Unlock game, but with much more going for it. It’s broken up into three parts:

1. Episode 1: Into the Unknown
2. Episode 2: No Going Back
3. Episode 3: Seeing Double

We got our hands on the first of the three of these parts with Into The Unknown and I gave it a quick play over a couple of coffees of a sunny September afternoon. The gameplay flow is straightforward and easy to follow. You draw cards from a deck of cards and read through the short comic strips, or snippets of story. Occasionally, a challenge will be presented that you have to “solve” by figuring out the correct number to draw from the deck in order to proceed. In Unlock-style, some cards have hidden numbers on them which in non-Unlock style, offer bonus achievements, content, and story. At one point in the game you can take part in a non-puzzley mini game, which might actually be my favourite gimmick in a puzzle game ever, and Minty Noodles executes it so well here. But overall, the focus remains on the more puzzley and narrative aspect of the game.

Since this is a website in which we mostly review puzzles, let’s focus on them for a second. The puzzles in this experience weren’t especially challenging. This may be a result of it being more family focused, or it might be that it’s just a small pilot episode designed to get folks into the narrative. But they did fit well into their thematic universe, and do a very good job of utilising the form-function of small cards inside a small box. I enjoyed physically manipulating cards in the non-destructive way the game requires in order to complete pictures, or manipulate the spaceship’s controls. This style of game borrows from the best of others in the genre, but adds it’s own unique twist that make it a genuine joy to solve. As I say, it wasn’t especially challenging and I’d very much like to see the designers ramp it up further with later entries into this series… But for a pilot to get me into the world, it did it’s job very well!

Putting the puzzles to the side then, let’s look at some of the things Interstellar Adventures has done really well: Worldbuilding. Inspired by the likes of Star Trek, Interstellar Adventures’ pilot focuses a lot on the characters on the spaceship, their roles, and their interpersonal relations. This I absolutely adore. It’s a mixed crew of humans and aliens and each one has their own unique personality and factfile to go with them. Okay but how am I already shipping some of them and know I would die for others? If I weren’t travelling without my drawing tablet, you can bet I’d be absolutely eating this up and making fanart. It’s testament to the good writing in this that everything feels simultaneously both believable and each character very likable. It also helps that the artwork is just so well done too. Each card is hand-illustrated in this gorgeous, consistent style that is colourful and poppy. Getting to know the characters in all their colour was a joy with each turn of the cards.

If I had only one criticism it would be… Way too short! But that’s more a reflection on how much fun I found this pilot episode and how excited I am to play the rest of the game when it releases. The team have done an excellent job of setting the scene and leaving me wanting for more. If they continue in the exact same vein of Episode 1, this’ll be a great game. But if they continue to improve, expand the world, and make the puzzles more challenging then this will undoubtedly be brilliant. I’m excited to find out.

Presently, Interstellar Adventures can be purchased via Minty Noodles’ Kickstarter here.

Note, we were gifted an early access copy of “Part 1” ahead of the company’s Kickstarter. This has not affected the contents of our review, but there may be slight differences between the copy we played, and the final product.