Star Wars Unlock! Secret Mission on Jedha | Review

Boxed Games Play at Home Sci-Fi
Mairi
June 10, 2021
0
11 minutes read

You are an Imperial spy sent to infiltrate the Holy City of Jedha. An Imperial pilot transporting a crate of priceless kyber crystals crashed their Zeta- class cargo shuttle on the surface. You must retrieve the crate without alerting the Rebel scum Saw Gerrera or any of his lawless mercenaries on Jedha. There is an Imperial informant waiting for you on the surface with more details. Meanwhile, Imperial Command orbits Jedha in a Star Destroyer. They are within communications range and expect regular updates.

Rating: Brilliant!
Completion Time: 43:42
Date Played: 4th May 2021
Party Size: 2
Recommended For: Fans of Star Wars

We made it! Only ~5 months after I purchased Star Wars Unlocked! as a Christmas gift for my Player 2, we finally got to tackling the grand finale: Secret Mission on Jedha. I literally could not think of a more perfect day to play this than… You guessed it! May the 4th. *darth vader breathing intensifies*

Before we begin, you can check out my review for the two earlier parts of this boxed trilogy, An Unforseen Delay and Escape from Hoth here. Since each story in this game is a whole hour-long standalone game, I’ve chosen to review the three of them separately.

The Story

Unlike the other two stories, Secret Mission on Jedha lets you play as the bad guys (“finally!” says Player 2) and I have to say despite not being a Star Wars fan I’m learning a lot about the films through playing this, such as the names of planets, what symbols the good and bad guys use, and schematics of spaceships.

This game starts with you arriving at the Holy City of Jedha – there’s a rumour of a crate of priceless ‘Kyber Crystals’ in a crash landed wreckage somewhere on this planet. But, given the planet’s reputation for lawlessness if you don’t hurry up those crystals will find their way onto the black market faster than you can say “May the 4th be with you”.

What follows is more of a journey than an ‘escape room’ but nonetheless packed with fun escape room style puzzles to solve as you sneak your way into and out of market places and keep an eye out for rebels. At several moments in the game peripheral characters treat you with suspicion and worry. You also get to arrest people.

I pause…

The Experience

Unlock! games are played via a deck of cards and a mobile app. Just like An Unforseen Delay and Escape from Hoth, Secret Mission on Jedha is one of the most high tech escape rooms I’ve played in the Unlock! series so far, which makes sense with as big a collaboration as Star Wars! What this means for the player is that as well as the usual lock mechanism and machinery you can manipulate via the app, Unlock! Star Wars will also have you piloting millennium falcons and speaking alien languages.

The cards on the other hand work as follows: each card has a number on it and only when you ‘discover’ the number can you draw it from the deck. When you come across code or machine cards (yellow and green) you must head to the app and get technical! This game also gave us a map of the local area – a huge help in keeping our bearings in the environment as we, quite literally, searched for treasure!

I have to admit it was also quite fun being the baddies for once. I can’t believe I’m admitting it but we were disappointed you couldn’t be even more deadly in this game. A Storm Trooper leaving an enemy rebel sniper alive to escape? Unlikely! Where did we put that pistol card?!

The Puzzles

Secret Mission on Jedha is the most difficult of the three games available in this series however we found it easy enough. At each stage it was fairly intuitive what to do next and by the time you’ve played through all three you’ll generally be able to get the gist of what the game wants you to do. So our time of 43 minutes and 0 hints isn’t bad!

In this game players can expect to encounter many puzzles which rely on observation skills – how well were you paying attention, and how closely can you examine a card. Where the difficulty ramps up is in those moments where you have to think laterally and logically about your situation. A hypothetical question might be that you need fuel. You’ve got to think about what you might do to find fuel, or create fuel, what energy sources are available. Questions like this left us scratching our heads on more than one occasion.

Overall

I’m not a Star Wars fan but I really enjoyed playing Secret Mission on Jedha alongside the others in the Star Wars series. This game is an absolute must-buy for any Star Wars fans in your lives, but even if you’re just along for the ride to solve puzzles, this game is completely accessible to everyone. Unlock! have done some really special stuff with the Star Wars universe and created some wonderful adventure-themed puzzles to boot. Nice work!