Unlock!: The Tonipal’s Treasure

The Tonipal’s Treasure, sets you at the start of a hunt for the treasure of Captain Smith, hidden somewhere on Tonipal Island. As your adventure begins, you’ve been arrested by the Governor and thrown into prison from where you’ll need to escape quickly, especially since Johnson, a famous treasure hunter, is also on his way to Tonipal in search of the very treasure that you seek.

Rating: Yarrghhh’mazing
Completion Time: 61 minutes
Date Played: 9th August 2020
Party Size: 2

The Tonipal’s Treasure is one of the Mystery Adventures set by play at home game company, Unlock! As with their other games, the whole experience fits in your pocket. It’s just a deck of cards and the Unlock! App. Compared to all the other’s I’ve played so far (The Island of Doctor Goorse & The Nautilus’ Traps plus the others I haven’t quite got round to writing up yet), The Tonipal’s Treasure is my easy favourite! I LOVED IT!

Yes okay, it’s not listed in my bio but I am quite partial to pirate games. Literally, there’s nothing more enjoyable than putting on the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack and searching for treasure. Pirates are … Cool!

So stepping into the world of Tonipal in search of treasure was an absolute joy. There’s such a fun narrative in this game. First, you’re locked up in a prison cell. Step one is to break out (but don’t worry, you later come back for your cellmates!), then what follows is an exciting trip from location to location. You meet good guys, bad guys, and voodoo priestesses. You’ll have opportunities to make a choice (whether you want to fight or flight, for example) which gives the game an impression of a ‘choose your own adventure’.

The puzzles too were enjoyable. In the past, we’ve found some of the Unlock! games are a little harder to follow but this one was great fun and just the right kind of challenging. The game relies a lot on ‘Machine’ cards, which are green. These give you a code to input into the app and there you can interact with your environment. One such puzzle has you create a recipe, another sticking pins in a doll. As well as Machine Cards, there are lots of items to collect, the meaning for which may not even become clear until right at the end of the game which again – brilliant!

In particular, I loved the ending puzzle. If, whilst playing (and from my photographs) you couldn’t tell that the backs of the cards have a particularly suspicious treasure map design … Well then you’re in for a treat because yes, the final puzzle involves an epicly large treasure map that didn’t quite fit on our table.

A final note on this review of The Tonipal’s Treasure, a post-game Google told me that apparently when you finish, there’s in fact a bonus extra mission that takes you on a real life immersive treasure hunt! I’ll try not to give any spoilers here – although since what I’m about to describe has now ended it’s a very low stakes spoiler – but effectively when you finish this game you have a card or two left over and a secret code that points you towards a URL. The URL offers more clues, which reference completely different games in the series. Any players lucky enough to solve the whole thing (and it looked hard!) would be rewarded well. The puzzles are absolutely still there, but you’ll not find a prize at the end anymore.

The Tonipal’s Treasure can be purchased for approximately £15 on Amazon, or local retailers.