EXIT the Game: The Mysterious Museum | Review

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The Mysterious Museum Review | You are on a trip to the Florence Natural History Museum, intent on visiting the sunken treasure of the Santa Maria. Your relaxing day at the museum is quickly derailed by an incredible adventure! Can you solve the mysteries of the museum and find a way out? Difficulty Level: 2 of 5. This game can be played only one time because you must markup, fold, and tear the game materials to solve the riddles and escape.

Completion Time: 1 hour
Date Played: February 2022
Party Size: 4
Difficulty: Medium

EXIT the Game is one of the best known escape rooms “in-a-box” series in the world. As such, they’re fairly reliable. Going into any experience you know what you’re getting. About 1 hour’s worth of fun, there’ll be a cipher wheel-style disc, several destructible materials, and typically a little booklet with it too. The Mysterious Museum is no different. Except for once, I didn’t buy this game myself! A friend received it as a Christmas gift, and knowing how much I enjoy escape room games, she brought it over to our regular board game night in the hopes of puzzling it out.

We sandwiched this game inbetween two others, intending for it to be our “short and sweet” collaborative refresher between two other bulkier games. It was anything but. Sometimes games come along that others find perfectly straightforward and just don’t click for you. The Mysterious Museum was this for us.

But let’s get into why.

Puzzling at the Florence History Museum

Our story began at the Florence Museum of Science and Technology, a setting mysteriously hinted at by the front cover of this game’s box – a partially open door from which light pours out. At the beginning, you have an idea that your goal might be about tracking down sunken treasure – a mission quite suggestively similar to The Sunken Treasure. But it wasn’t long until we realised the actually this adventure would be quite different. For starters, it revolved around time travel.

Yep, we kept an eye out to make sure we didn’t accidentally step on a bug and change the course of history!

But it’s not just the past. The game takes players all through history – past, present, and future. A museum is an excellent setting for such a tale of time travel, and it was a fun theme to set a puzzle game such as this one in. Did I mention it looks brilliant too? I’m a sucker for lovely artwork, and EXIT has an abundance of beautiful illustrations.

How to solve EXIT the Game

Solving EXIT the Game escape rooms follows a similar formula, and The Mysterious Museum is no different. Each box contains:

Riddle Cards – These are given a letter and generally speaking are worked through in ABC order
Answer Cards – These have a corresponding letter to the riddle cards and, you guessed it, they give the answer if needed
Help Cards – Each help card is denoted by a symbol which you can find on the puzzle you’re working on somewhere (often it’s quite hidden – so look closely)
A Book – This sets the scene and guides you through the story
A Cipher Wheel – To check your answers, a cipher wheel is used. In The Sunken Treasure this cipher wheel is covered in cute sea critters – very sweet!
A bunch of cool looking misc. items – in The Sunken Treasure, you get a whole host of cool things including some very shiny looking gems!

To play, you get up your game with your Help Cards stacked according to symbol, and your Riddle / Answer cards in their own stack. The book guides you through the story to solve each puzzle, find the correct symbols, run it through the cipher wheel and progress.

In terms of difficulty as indicated, we found this game quite hard indeed! Hesitant to take any clues, and a couple of glasses of wine at board game night in, the game didn’t quite click for us. The linear nature of this particular game also meant that once we became stuck, the game ground to a halt. With 4 players playing, a few of us struggled to keep interest up, and the whole game amounted to a slow puzzling session. Even those we were sure we had correct ended up requiring an additional logic leap we hadn’t made.

That said, in hindsight and in asking a few other friends, we might be alone in finding this one tricky. For sure, the company themselves rate this game somewhere towards Novice on the difficulty scale. So don’t let our struggles put you off giving it a go if the game otherwise appeals to you!

On the flip side, this game contained several very delightful puzzles which were some of my all time favourites. In particular, I enjoyed moments of physical manipulation. Furthermore, the EXIT team always make full use of the box. Though no spoilers about exactly what I’m talking about – you’ll just have to wait and see for yourself!

The Verdict

On balance, The Mysterious Museum has some strong pros (such as the theme and the quality) but let down by the puzzles and flow. So in a nutshell, it wasn’t my favourite EXIT game. I am however a big enthusiast when it comes to their other games, so I’ve no doubt this is just a small blip with particularly styled puzzles that our team struggled with on the day.

The Mysterious Museum can be purchased from all good board game retailers.

iDventure: The Fire in Adlerstein | Review

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Adlerstein Review | A citizen was killed in an arson attack in the city of Adlerstein. Isn’t it a strange coincidence? You, inspector, have to find out who the culprit is by detecting files and alibis.

Completion Time: 1 hour
Date Played: 23rd October 2021
Party Size: 2
Difficulty: Medium

“Let’s play a board game, here are two choices” I say to my escape room un-enthusiastic partner on a Saturday morning. Surprisingly, rather than picking another ancient civilisation building romp, they selected Adlerstein as something a little different. It’s not quite an escape room in a box, but it’s not quite a board game either.

The packaging – a box that fits neatly on my board game shelf – is deceptive. What you actually receive within this box is a detailed paper case file. The game also doesn’t come with any instructions, except for a single letter entitled “Dear Detectives“.

No turns, no dice, your goal is to simply ‘solve the case’ in the fastest time possible.

Good luck!

Find the Culprit, Crack the Case

Your introduction to the case begins when you receive a letter from a local journalist. Interested in the case, we had gathering evidence when suddenly he got arrested – I mean, he was spotted at the scene of the crime and took an unhealthy interest in the fire! Protesting his innocence, he sends you all the evidence he’s collected in the hopes you’ll solve the case for him.

From here it’s a classic whodunnit… A number of suspects with motives, unpicking their actions and figuring out who reasonably could have been at the scene of the crime at the correct time with the right motive to have commited the crime.

To help you out, you’ve got a box packed with a large quantity of stuff to sort through, which was a lot of fun. One made up location, but plenty of impressively realistic pieces of evidence, ranging from Google Maps, license plate searches, stills from CCTV, high quality photographs, written notes. We can’t fault how exciting and realistic it felt to receive a box filled with such objects.

By the end of the hour as we were approaching the climax, we’d completely covered two tables in a ‘detectives board’ style of flat lay, spreading all the relevant information out and drawing lines and connections between characters and events. If you enjoy completely immersing yourself in fictional worlds as you unravel a complex case, then this game is for you! For sure, there are better games out there that do the same thing, but it certainly scratched that armchair detective itch.

There’s a Killer Among Us…

Putting our ‘escape room’ hat on for a moment, it’s hard to judge Adlerstein on puzzles because there weren’t many puzzles to solve in the game – with one exception in the form of a classic cipher puzzle. But this cipher didn’t fit well in the universe, and whats more it was long, cumbersome, and not fun to solve. We ended up skipping the cipher by checking the hints as not to disrupt the flow of the gameplay.

Otherwise all the puzzles players will encounter are pure social deduction puzzles. “If this, then that” or “If he said this, and she said something else, who is lying?” type of thing. Which are fun in their own right, but are less common in the escape room world.

You solve the case by filling out a grid – find everyone’s motive, their alibi, and so on. Whatever the gaps int he grid are is where you’ll find your killer.

So how did we do? We played Adlerstein once through without filling the grid and instead just holding the information in our heads. We reached the ending and short of an educated guess – couldn’t crack the case. So we started from the top and went through methodically, filling the grid, and making sure that each piece of information couldn’t be guessed. And then… We couldn’t crack the case either. I’m quite sure we guessed every single wrong answer before getting to the correct one, and even then we were like “huh? how?” A little but anti-climactic and a lot of frustrating, but we were glad for the resolution at the end.

No, the best thing about playing Adlerstein wasn’t solving puzzles – or even cracking the case. It was reading through a pretty cool story and feeling like you too were at the heart of it. People (fictional, sure) are depending on you to crack the case. It’s not your regular board game, it’s something quite different and that’s exciting!

The Verdict

The Fire in Adlerstein is a classic whodunnit with plenty of twists and turns in the detailed story. Our tip to anyone using this post to help solve the game is to read and re-read everything for even the smallest details. The game comes in at between 1 – 3 hours, but can easily be reset and regifted. We made a lot of effort not to ruin any of the materials, and passed it along to the next person at The Escape Roomer to see if they could solve any faster!

The creators want you to feel like a real detective, but they’ll make you work for that solution – good luck!

Adlerstein can be purchased from iDventure’s website here.

Code Bakers: Fudge Fiasco | Review

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Fudge Fiasco Review: A pack of puzzles to solve to uncover what flavour fudge you’ve been sent!

Rating: Fudgin’ brill!
Completion Time: ~30 minutes
Date Played: 29th December 2021
Party Size: 2
Recommended For: A sweet treat!

Penguins taken from codebakers.co.uk (not literally)

A Christmas Treat!

A combination of a sweet treat + an escape room style puzzle…

…We are so there!

The team at Code Bakers have hit the jackpot with this winning combination which allows players to combine delicious sweet treats with puzzling to definitely make you feel like you’ve earnt your dessert! The Fudge Fiasco game sends players two mysterious blocks of fudge, challenging you to find out what the flavours are before tucking in.

For Fudge Sake!

After receiving Fudge Fiasco as a part of the UK Puzzle Bundle, we cracked it open on a cosy afternoon, looking to fill half an hour of puzzling and tuck into our afternoon snack. These games are interesting in that it can be difficult to know where to start, especially when you are presented with multiple puzzles at once. But, once we had figured out what we were doing and what bits went together, the puzzles flowed really well.

It is great how much the Code Bakers’ team can pack into their small envelopes!

The map puzzle (pictured above) was definitely one of the more innovative versions of this style of puzzle that we have seen. It did leave us scratching our heads for a while, but once we realised some slightly ‘outside the box’ thinking was needed, we worked our way through this nicely!

It was very satisfying to solve, and the aha moment left us both smiling.

The puzzles are good for teams of two or more working together in a more relaxed atmosphere. We think this would be a great pre-dinner game for a family or a pre-escape room warm up for a team of enthusiasts (plus then you’d have the sugar kick from the fudge ready to go in and boss your room!).

Ash looking 10/10 happy with discovering her fudgey flavours

The Delicious Finale

Once we had made our way through the puzzles, we treated ourselves to two tasty bars of fudge! It’s nice to have a physical reward for solving the puzzles, which helps make these games stand out in that ‘at-home’ escape market.

We always enjoy a game from the Code Bakers – I think we will start using these to send gifts to our friends (to make them work for their treats!).

We look forward to playing more of these in the future!

Fudge Fiasco can be purchased for yourself (or given as a gift) by heading to Code Baker’s website here.

Diorama: The Vandermist Dossier | Review

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The Vandermist Dossier Review | The Vandermist Dossier is a treasure trove of beautiful, touch-real evidence from an old missing person’s case in a tiny Dutch village. Untouched since the 1970’s, will you follow the clues and figure out what happened to 19-year-old amateur sleuth Abigail Vandermist?

Date Played: 28th August 2021
Number of Players: 1
Difficulty: Comfortably Challenging!
Time Taken: 1 hour 15 minutes

The Vandermist Dossier is a brand new mystery box by the creative duo behind Diorama, Ruud and Tristan. It follows a missing persons case in a small Dutch town that quickly unfolds into Cold War secrets that could tear the titular family apart. This game officially launches on Kickstarter in September, but we were very lucky to get our hands on an early copy and WOW! Just wow!

Could this be one of the most exciting Kickstarter games launching this year? It might just be.

But let’s get into why…

Het Boekanier Dossier

What makes The Vandermist Dossier special is that it is based on an earlier, Dutch-language game by the same creators: Het Boekanier Dossier (“The Buccaneer Dossier”). Wildly popular in the Netherlands and around the world, the creators have since been hard at work with the help of Manda Whitney translating it into English and have even added several brand new puzzles to the rich world of Het Boekanier Dossier.

This gets a double thumbs up from us, as these tweaks and changes evidently introduce huge improvements on the already popular original game. Where the original averages a neat 8.5 on Board Game Geek, with the wealth of content, brilliant puzzles and engaging story, perhaps this version will push 9 or even 10.

The Vandermist Family and the Backwards Town

The story of The Vandermist Dossier picks up with a mysterious letter and box labelled ‘Vandermist Dossier’ arriving in the post to you. The letter is from a lady named Helena Vandermist who would like to enlist your help in a missing persons case. The missing person: Her sister Abigail.

Though the case is nearly 40 years old and definitely cold by now, Helena never gave up hope of finding her long lost sister and you might just be her last option. In the box, Ms Vandermist has sent you everything she’s found out about the case over the years, including letters from her sister Abigail, newspaper clippings, old passports and some rather curious coded messages.

No detail is spared and everything in the box felt genuine and handmade. What follows is a deep dive into the 1970s tracking down the movements of the young girl as she uncovered secrets of her own family intertwined with the fate of the town. It’s hard not to give anything away, but this game will take you into the heart of the Cold War with some surprising twists of fate.

Crack the Codes, Crack the Case

In terms of puzzles, The Vandermist Dossier has enough content to last between 1 – 2 hours and felt really well balanced the whole way through. The game is clear on where to start and each subsequent piece of evidence has breadcrumbs to lead to the next, and the next, and so on.

It’s also fairly clear which existed in the original game, with a few translations to make them flow more easily in English, and a fair few more which felt fresh. There were two in particular which I couldn’t believe would work… But they did! All in all this game is full of surprises to delight players: A few things I’d never seen before, a few moments of hunting through documents and squinting really hard and a few ciphers I thought I recognised but still managed to say “wow” at.

Overall, in terms of difficulty I’d rate this one as comfortably challenging. As a team of just one, I used a few hints here and there to keep me on track and confirm what I thought I knew already… But better yet if you have any additional players you can bring into the mystery and help bounce ideas and puzzle solutions around!

If you want to make the most out of your copy of The Vandermist Dossier, wait until an overcast evening, brew a strong cup of tea (or a tipple of your choice), and invite a close knit team of your best investigator friends. Since the story centres around two sisters, it would also make a lovely collaborative story to unfold with a close sibling of your own. But since mine is 11 and far more interested in Minecraft, solo play works fantastically too!

The Verdict

“Alexa, what are some synonyms for incredible?”

But seriously, I was blown away by how much I enjoyed The Vandermist Dossier. It ticks a lot of boxes for me personally: The Cold War… And even colder cases! Espionage, Missing Persons, European Small Towns… All packaged in a really neat and high quality box you could complete in an afternoon. The best part? There are two more boxes in this trilogy to come!

What I love the most is how much passion the creators have brought to the project. It’s a labour of love and the culmination of many people who love what they do! Many times when playing “boxed escape rooms” I’m delighted to find one or two keepsakes, such as a cute cipher wheel or a lovely coin. Every single item in The Vandermist Dossier I’d like to take out and frame… Beginning with the hand drawn map and the vintage feeling newspaper.

Back The Vandermist Dossier on Kickstarter

If you want to support Ruud and Tristan to bring The Vandermist Dossier to life further, you can back them on Kickstarter from last September. At the time of writing, a whole month before the launch of the Kickstarter, I have a beautifully high quality copy of the game in my hand. Whilst there may be a few production tweaks between now and fulfilment, this game is gorgeous and it’s ready to go. With such an enthusiastic creator team, it’s sure to be a fun Kickstarter.

The Vandermist Dossier can currently only be purchased by backing the project on Kickstarter. Check out the creator’s website here for more behind the scenes content.

Ratings

Dark Park: Witchery Spell | Review

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Witchery Spell Review | While playing Witchery Spell you will meet 5 young witches. One of them recently turned 23 and mysteriously disappeared from the face of the earth. What happened to her and does the same horrific fate await the others? As young girls, they performed a ritual from an ancient book they found. Now it turns out that this seemingly innocent child’s play may be their downfall. The problem: only someone who is not a witch himself can lift the spell, but what are the consequences? Are you brave enough to unleash the powerful ancient magic once again?

Rating: Spooky
Completion Time: 1hr30
Date Played: 1st August 2021
Party Size: 3
Recommended For: Small groups on dark nights

Witchery Spell is one of those games. You know the ones I mean… Everybody is talking about them.

If the at-home escape room industry had a ‘game of the year’ award, Witchery Spell would probably be up for nomination in every category there is. Which is why I’m surprised to be writing that I don’t know if it quite lived up to the hype. But don’t get me wrong – it was still a brilliant game. But that’s the problem with hype, isn’t it?

So all hype aside, we’re going to discuss the game’s merits with one cautionary note: Don’t me like me and place Witchery Spell on a (literal) pedestal in your office and wait over a year to play it because you were too worried about ‘wasting it’ on a regular board game night.

Just play it now! You won’t regret it.

Solve the Puzzles, Save the Witches

Dark Park have created a really well rounded boxed game that is equal parts surprising and delightful in Witchery Spell. At it’s core, Witchery Spell is a story about a group of witches being hunted by a modern day witchfinder organisation. One of their party had recently turned 23, which is the age their original protection spell wore off. Before they’re all found and killed, they turn to you for help. You see- there’s another protection ritual that they desperately need in order to evade detection, but apparently witches can’t actually perform this type of magic themselves. How inconvenient!

What follows is a non-linear style game to figure out a number of things:

What happened to the missing witch? And,
How we could perform the ritual ourselves?

To help you out, you’ve got a big cardboard box full of stuff, and the internet.

Really Impressive Puzzle Components

What makes Witchery Spell such a special game is the sheer high quality of it’s components. However I’ll caveat that by saying it does come in a very ordinary, and very degradable cardboard box. The box was pretty scuffed up when it arrived in the post *shakes fist at the postal system*, but thankfully the material inside was in tact, packed up tightly with straw.

The components include:

Curious jars and vials of ingredients, such as Arsenica, Ivory and Salt
Equipment that looks right out of an apothecary
A candle, a feather, and some magical stones
A small deck of Tarot Cards
Several rolled up scrolls
Something that can only be described as a “demon summoning mat”
Photographs, case files, and other oddities about the witches in question

@theescaperoomer
unboxing the infamous Witchery Spell! #halloween #witches #witchesoftiktok #witchinghour #boardgame #escaperoom #boardgametok #fypシ #fypage
♬ This Is Halloween – TryHardNinja

…But that’s not all, Witchery Spell also has a very large online component, guiding you through the experience and providing guidance and puzzles along the way too. For a two hour experience, it really is an immersive and in-depth game.

Each one of these components I’ve mentioned ended up being used in really delightful ways. There’s one moment in the game, and I’ll try not to spoil anything here, where we suddenly spotted that an earlier item we’d put aside was now doing something very unexpected. Yes ‘doing’. Cue some very excited screams!

So I guess you could say it’s about as close to magic as it’s possible to get.

How Difficult is Witchery Spell?

Our team of three completed Witchery Spell in around one hour and thirty minutes with no hints. We did accidentally skip one or two steps in the game – reaching the next part without fully following how we’d made the jump, but overall this game flows well and doesn’t throw anything super difficult at you!

This means that in terms of difficulty, I’d rate it ‘comfortable’. It’d be a great game for beginners to fall in love with the wonderful world of at-home escape rooms, but still provides enough brilliant ‘wow’ moments and unexpectedly exciting puzzles for veterans. I can also guarantee that even players on their 1000th game will experience something very new in Witchery Spell!

That said, there is a ‘choose your own adventure’ element to this game. I mention this as the ‘other path’ may have wildly changed the difficulty in this game, but I may never know!

Halloween Activity? Look No Further

As mentioned, I had this game on my shelf for literal months. When one of my closest and most enthusiastic escape room buddies visited after a long lockdown, I figured it’d be the perfect game to try out with her. The sun was already beginning to set, we switched up the lighting to red, lit some candles and got stuck in.

In hindsight, October 31st 2020 was one of those days Witchery Spell sat on my shelf gathering dust, and I regret not playing it then! It’s so atmospheric and genuinely puts the player on edge, feeling like they’re inside a world of black magic and witches perfectly. But October 31st 2021? I might just put that refill kit to good use and invite a small team around to give this another go – it’s just that perfect of a game for October.

In particular, I’d recommend this for a team of up to 5 players sat around a table. Better still with candles, and better even still with some kind of witchy playlist in the background.

Overall, a brilliant game. Sure, it didn’t quite live up to the hype for me, but it’s still absolutely worth the price and I can see how impressive it is in the at-home genre. Go in with an open mind and a sense of delight and wonder and you won’t be disappointed. Especially don’t let this one gather dust on your shelf 😉

Witchery Spell can be purchased for around £55 on Dark Park’s website here. We’d recommend purchasing a refill kit.

EXIT the Game: The Sunken Treasure | Review

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Setting sail for dangerous waters, you embark on a treacherous quest for the legendary treasure of the Santa Maria. While investigating a mysterious shipwreck, something goes terribly wrong and you are trapped deep underwater! Can you solve the riddles of the wreck and recover the treasure before your time is up? In this The Sunken Treasure Review we take a deep dive into the game.

Rating: Fun!
Completion Time: 35 minutes
Date Played: 7th July 2021
Party Size: 2
Recommended For: A beginner escape room in a box with a fun theme!

When I look at my board game shelf it’s at least 60% EXIT the Game boxes… But hey, at least my shelves look colourful and mysterious, eh?

For our weekly board game night, my player 2 picks a game the first week, then I get to pick the second week, which is how we come to be making our way through the brilliant EXIT the Game series. Starting with: The Sunken Treasure. It’s a little box covered in brilliant illustrations of the ocean and rated a respectable 2 out of 5 stars in difficulty. In short, this makes it a perfect starter ‘escape room in a box’ for someone who may not be familiar with their gameplay yet.

A Board Game Where you Dive for Lost Treasure

Playing The Sunken Treasure is about as close as you can get to taking a real trip out on a boat, strapping into a scuba kit and diving for treasure. That is of course assuming that underwater shipwrecks are usually covered in puzzles, and you have a handy cipher wheel to help you. I mean, I’ve never been scuba diving. I have no idea.

But jokes aside, I really enjoyed the theme, and the story, of The Sunken Treasure. It’s fairly simple: Whilst on a holiday in the Caribbean you pay a street vendor a few dollars and receive a cool old nautical chart. But what you thought was just a fun trinket from your holidays turns out to me a long lost treasure map. So out you venture onto a boat and arrive where ‘X marks the spot’.

You and your crew of puzzlers descend into the water in search of the old wreckage and luck have it, you discover it. But after so many years of being under the depths there’s a few challenges before you can retrieve your riches. What’s more, you’ve only got an hour’s worth of oxygen left so you’d better make it quick!

The Sunken Treasure: An Escape Room in a Box for Beginners

Personally, I did find The Sunken Treasure to be on the easy side, although our little team of two did use one hint and an answer for one of the puzzles I’m still not totally sure I understand how to solve (but I largely blame the bottle of wine we’d opened by that point).

One stand-out feature of The Sunken Treasure is how linear the gameplay is. Guiding you along your journey is a book that paces the story out with approximately one puzzle per double page spread. As each page clearly indicates a new card to be drawn and the previous to be discarded, it makes for a very clean play area.

For The Sunken Treasure it makes sense as you progress from your ship to diving down to finding the wreckage and so on. Never once are you presented with a room where there are several doors you can choose from, it’s instead a regular story with a beginning, middle and end.

In terms of puzzles, there’s a good mix in this game and nothing too challenging. My only advice would be to go in with an open mind and expect to have to destroy things and use the box in very creative ways. If you’ve played any of the other EXIT The Game games, you’ll probably know the drill by now – but it’ll be a delightful surprise to those who haven’t.

On the subject of it’s destructibility, I own a second-hand copy of The Sunken Treasure, kindly gifted by Escaping the Closet. Whilst EXIT The Game are known for being impossible to re-gift as a result of needing to destroy elements of the game, I think taking a little bit of care with The Sunken Treasure will make it replayable to an extent. There are a few puzzles where you have to cut things up, but on the bright side seeing that my co-writers had already done this I viewed it more as a “yay one less step” rather than being game breaking. So take that with a pinch of salt!

How to Play EXIT The Game

In all EXIT the Game board games we’ve played so far, there’s a fairly similar setup, which we’ll describe below:

Riddle Cards – These are given a letter and generally speaking are worked through in ABC order
Answer Cards – These have a corresponding letter to the riddle cards and, you guessed it, they give the answer if needed
Help Cards – Each help card is denoted by a symbol which you can find on the puzzle you’re working on somewhere (often it’s quite hidden – so look closely)
A Book – This sets the scene and guides you through the story
A Cipher Wheel – To check your answers, a cipher wheel is used. In The Sunken Treasure this cipher wheel is covered in cute sea critters – very sweet!
A bunch of cool looking misc. items – in The Sunken Treasure, you get a whole host of cool things including some very shiny looking gems!

The Verdict

Really good fun! The Sunken Treasure is a great beginners game and introduction to the EXIT The Game series that will challenge and delight in equal measures. It’s a high quality game with great components – especially those gems *ooh shiny*. I’d recommend this game for a smaller group, with 2 or 3 players being the sweet spot!

The Sunken Treasure can be purchased from most major online retailers..

Trapped: The Art Heist | Review

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In Art Heist, the obscenely-rich Harrington family invites you to an exhibition of their priceless art. Upset that his family hoards wealth, though, their youngest son, Charles, asks your party to steal a painting… Fearing detection, Charles leaves only a series of clues to help you find the right artwork. But you’re not alone! Charles has also convinced one of the staff to help you escape… Can you find the painting, steal it and flee the scene – all in 60 minutes?

Rating: Different!
Completion Time: 45 minutes
Date Played: 23rd June 2021
Party Size: 3
Recommended For: Families or a Party Game

Every Wednesday in my household is board game night. We’re not technically supposed to double book ourselves with anything on that day, but on this particular Wednesday my player two had invited a friend a friend over…

“No worries, we’ve got ourselves a 3rd player. That means it’s HEIST TIME!”

The Art Heist has been sitting on my shelf for an embarrassingly long time. But in my defence, it’s been a long lockdown and The Art Heist is definitely best played in a group setting. There’s a bit of set up required as you empty the box and follow instructions on each item: Pin this to a wall, put this on a door, put this item on a coffee table. If it’s your kinda thing, here’s me setting up our game over on TikTok:

@theescaperoomer
let’s play THE ART HEIST by Trapped #escaperoom #escapeathome #puzzles #GetGrafting #fyp #boardgame #letsplay #letsplayagame
♬ original sound – The Escape Roomer

Escape Room in Your Home

What Trapped does quite differently from most other ‘boxed escape room’ companies on the market is turn your space into an actual escape room. Ordinary items can become extraordinary within the context of the game and even the host can play too. Just pick a door, set the scene, and try to escape! It’s pretty cool, really.

On the back of each item in the box is a few lines of instruction, indicating where best to put it: “Place this on a wall” or “This goes on a windowsill or coffee table”. The rest is up to your imagination – but it helps to keep everything roughly in the same general place so your guests aren’t wildly searching through your cupboards to find the next clue.

I also reckon this game would be fantastic for a family setting. Got a group of kids in your house? Give them a name badge, an art collectors pamphlet, and let them figure it out for themselves. It’s wonderfully fun exploring and looking for hints, and leaves a lot to the imagination!

What I also love about this style of gameplay is that it fits so perfectly with the setting: An Art Gallery. The only rule? Don’t look too suspicious. It’s so easy to get lost in the immersion of the game, that you’re just an inconspicuous group of art collectors quietly perusing an art gallery before BOOM stolen painting and lets get the heck out of here.

…Well, that’s the idea anyway, though it didn’t completely go to plan. Why’s that?

“Alexa, play some heist music”

Cue Alexa to DROP THE BASS. Apparently searching for heist music via an Alexa device plays a hilarious medley of hardcore electronica music, but we thought to ourselves, “Hey, why not? Let’s roll with it.”

Combined with a couple of beers on an otherwise really quiet Wednesday afternoon, the whole experience was quite surreal! I couldn’t stop laughing, except to take this one ‘serious’ photo.

How to Play The Art Heist

There are two stages to The Art Heist:

First, you need to identify which painting you’ve been tasked to steal. No, no – Charles wouldn’t just tell you which painting to steal, that would be too easy. You’ve got to follow his trail of breadcrumbs and figure it out for yourself!
Second, you need to escape with the painting undetected. It’s a good job the painting is so small I could just slip it right into my pocket! Haha!

We may have missed something (I’ll blame the beer and confusing electronic music), but we spent around 90% of the time on Part A and only 10% of the time on Part B. There was also one item which I realised after packing up that we’d not used either…. Days later I still can’t figure out what it’s for, but perhaps we’re just that good of art thieves we didn’t need it.

If at any point you find yourselves needing a clue, the clue system is an absolute delight. Trapped provides a ‘clue book’ which, at first glance, looks like gobble-de-gook. By overlaying another object found in the box and lining up the numbers, a secret clue is revealed. It’s a really nice touch if you want to avoid spoiling the game for yourself!

So how did we steal the painting?

Not without help of course! The clues our handler Charles had left behind were tricky… But not too tricky! Nothing frustrating, and as a very casual play through we didn’t mind checking for a hint or two to keep us on the right track and having fun.

Puzzle solving veterans will probably immediately recognise certain puzzle types and be able to figure them out quickly, but new players will benefit from a hint or two I’m sure.

Overall, players can expect to encounter some folding puzzles, puzzles that involve finding details in blocks of text, puzzles that involve looking at things from a certain angle, some pretty cool maths puzzles, and so on. As you can probably tell, it wasn’t the most challenging game, but heck it was fun and I’m really glad I picked up a copy.

The Verdict

A fun and silly Wednesday afternoon’s worth of fun! Particularly great for a larger party of a family setting, but we had an excellent time over a crate of beer as a group of three non-puzzley 20 something year olds. It’s got great mass-market appeal and would be an awesome game to introduce to a group of friends not used to puzzle games.

I would say that the size makes it sit a little awkwardly on my board games shelf, but as a one-use game it’s already been packed up and sent to my co-writers here on The Escape Roomer and I can’t wait to hear what they thought of the game too.

Trapped: The Art Heist can be purchased from most major online distributors for around £13.

Star Wars Unlock! Secret Mission on Jedha | Review

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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!

Star Wars Unlock! can be purchased from most major online retailers for around £35 GBP

Exit the Game: The Pharaoh’s Tomb | Review

Posted on August 17, 2019 by Mairi

The Pharaoh’s Tomb Review | The excursion to the Valley of the Kings is the highlight of your vacation to Egypt. As you crawl through the narrow passageways, you lose the rest of your tour group. You enter a mysterious burial chamber. A massive stone door closes behind you.

Rating: Phar-abulous
Completion Time: 58 minutes
Date Played: 17th of August 2019
Party Size: 3

3 weeks and counting of being stuck at home and I’m definitely getting some escape room withdrawals. So it’s a good job I’ve got a shelf filled with Exit: The Game play-at-home escape rooms!

So here is a throwback to the first one I ever did! Sadly no longer on my shelf, but one I still come back to fondly when I’m trying to recommend an at-home experience. The idea is simple, the game quick, and puzzles challenging! As expected from the theme and title, in The Pharaoh’s Tomb you find yourself trapped in a mysterious tomb. *shudders in ancient egyptian*. The object of the game is to break out – simple, right? Each time you progress through the game and work through the cards, you locate new rooms, find new treasure, spot symbols, and unlock centuries old codes.

The puzzles are themed pretty well for the setting. I’m coming back to this review a while after playing it, but as well as the usual Exit the Game cutting, folding, and unexpected “woah!” moments, in this you can also expect hieroglyphs, animal puzzles, and plenty of mentions of Tutankhamen.

This one is marked 4/5 on the difficulty scale, but with plenty of optional hints it’s still possible to get through in under an hour. In particular, I generally enjoy Exit the Game’s mechanic of cards being picked up in a certain order with dead ends and twists and turns. It’s unique and interesting – but not particularly easy!

Overall, a fun way to spend an afternoon with friends, but a little bit of extra explaining needed if they’re not familiar with the structure of these games. Oh – and if you want to keep your box when you’re finished with it, be sure to photocopy bits! Is that a spoiler? Maybe! But worth mentioning that our experience was definitely one use only.

The Pharaoh’s Tomb can be purchased for £13 on Amazon, or at many local escape rooms.