Unlock! Exotic Adventures – Expedition: Challenger (Review)

August 21, 2019October 18, 2019 ~ EscapeAdventurer ~ Leave a comment

Location: Your Home!

Players: We recommend 1-3

Price: $14.99

Everybody do the dinosaur!

Theme:

From the Space Cowboys website:

A young woman knocks at the door of your PI agency. “My name is Gladys Ungerton. My friend, Ned Malone, has gone missing. You probably heard about him: he is one of the members of Prof. Challenger’s expedition! They recently returned from the Lost Valley full of strange creatures. I just received this notebook and this odd message. I don’t understand a word of any of it. Can you please go to the offices of Prof. Challenger? If you are true to your reputation, you will bring Ned back to me!”

First Impressions:

Unlock’s Exotic Adventures has, so far, been pretty disappointing compared to the previous sets, but generally, the final entries of each Unlock set have been the most exciting, with the best mechanics overall, so I was hopeful that this game would deliver! I mean how can you mess up dinosaurs?

High Points:

Expedition: Challenger has some overall good ideas, inserting an interesting twist on the timer once a particular stage of the game is reached, and though it comes along with some strange arbitrariness, with a little iteration, this method of keeping time could be very entertaining. There are a few really great puzzles involved during the solving of this box, some of which implement flawed ideas from Scheherazade’s Last Tale in a much smoother way, one of which really wowed us when we figured it out. Most of the puzzles are fun, if basic, and when the box works, it tends to work pretty well. A somewhat non-linear approach to the game is a good step forward, but unfortunately, the set up doesn’t allow for the game flow to take full advantage of the non-linearity.

Low Points:

Expedition Challenger frequently feels as though it is part of a beta test. Connections between multiple parts of the game flow are weak, and are in major need of better cluing in order to remove the leaps of logic required. One particular “machine” card in the app requires aimless searching that forces the flow of the game into a screeching halt, as the clue meant to assist with this interaction is ultimately useless. An early game puzzle requires outside knowledge, which has never been required for an Unlock game. The storyline is strong at the start, but the execution leaves much to be desired during the course of the game. The ending is completely anticlimactic, ending with little to no fanfare, and although we had completed everything the game had to offer, we were left wondering if there was something we had missed. One of the main goals of the game is saving all the characters who were lost on the expedition, and a key member of the expedition remains mysteriously lost, which may be an attempt at leaving the game open for a sequel, but as this glaring omission is never explained, it ends the story on a bewildering note.

Though some puzzles are well implemented and clever, much like the story many had us scratching our heads long after they had been completed. One of the main puzzles can be easily hacked using guess and check, and seems to encourage this, but is part of a clever puzzle that we missed out on due to the weird presentation of this interaction. The new map mechanic is full of some extremely arbitrary movement rules, contributing to a lot of confusion when the game instills a fair amount of learned helplessness in players. Overall, Expedition: Challenger would be a great first draft, but as a finished product for sale, it disappoints on multiple levels.

Verdict:

Expedition: Challenger tries it’s best, but ultimately, the clever puzzles are overshadowed by illogical interactions and a poor game flow. These issues are exacerbated by strangely arbitrary choices in the game design that serve only to punish the player, an ongoing frustration of the Exotic Adventures set. Give this one a skip, as it feels much too rushed to be a final product. Earlier sets are definitely worth a try, however, so if you’re looking to try an Unlock game, I’d suggest one of these! We buy ours at the ever excellent Atomic Empire in Durham, NC, check out their online store here!

5.5/10 (Mediocre)

Unlock! Exotic Adventures – Scheherazade’s Last Tale (Review)

July 17, 2019July 16, 2019 ~ EscapeAdventurer ~ 3 Comments

Location: Your Home!

Players: We recommend 1-3

Price: $14.99

“A funny thing happened on the way to my potential…”

Theme:

From the Space Cowboys website:

Scheherazade is in grave danger! She only has one hour to tell one last story to the Sultan, but she’s out of ideas. The scribe she asked to help her come up with a story has gone missing, and she is begging you to find him and bring him back as soon as possible with a tale to please the Sultan. The princess’s life may end in the hands of the executioner, so act fast!

First Impressions:

I adore the 1001 Arabian Nights, and finding out that Unlock! would be releasing an adventure that featured the greatest weaver of tales, Scheherazade, was very exciting. I couldn’t wait to pop this one open to see what fantastic adventures awaited us in this exotic adventure!

High Points:

Immediately upon popping open this game, I could tell the artwork was going to be amazing. It truly evokes a feeling of mystery and adventure, and I really think it is some of the best the series has to offer. There are a few great puzzles sprinkled throughout the experience that play with the cards and perspective in fantastic ways, and the set up for the story is classic and immediately entertaining. A few out of the box interactions promise iconic moments for this entry into the franchise, and there are some great ideas tucked away inside this box. All the potential this game had, however, is completely squandered fairly quickly.

Enter the colorful world of 1001 Arabian Nights!

Low Points:

This box was one of the biggest letdowns in the Unlock! series. Admittedly, as a fan of the 1001 Arabian Nights, I had higher expectations, but even players who aren’t are going to have some serious problems with this game. There are several points within the game where you are penalized for taking completely reasonable actions, some of which are actively encouraged by the game. These “gotcha” moments are evident in the last entry into Unlock’s Exotic Adventures, Night of the Boogeymen, but they are much more egregious here. The fact that two of the newest Unlock! games contain this sort of regressive game design is disheartening, and I hope newer adventures leave this sort of arbitrary penalization behind permanently.

One of the machine puzzles that is presented is clued incredibly vaguely, and penalizes you every time you fail. Because of the vague clues, guess and check is required to fully solve this puzzle, so this constant penalization is frustrating and really sucks the fun right out of the game. It isn’t easily solved either, so expect a lot of your play time to be drained with this interaction, stalling you from the rest of the adventure until you finally complete it. Another machine interaction is an excellent idea, but requires outside knowledge of the story, (which we fortunately had,) and a lot of pure luck getting your device to do what it is supposed to, (which we did not, causing us to fumble about wondering how to solve the puzzle.) The end of this tale is also supremely anticlimatic, and for all the buildup, we were really hoping for something more than that. On the whole, I’d describe the experience of playing this box as actively discouraging.

Verdict:

Scheherazade’s Last Tale is a game that I was supremely excited to play, based on the theme, but unfortunately, the whole experience face-plants into frustration and poor game design almost immediately. This is definitely an Unlock! game that you should give a wide berth, as the few clever puzzles and great art style is not enough to make up for the extremely misguided gotcha penalties and leaps of logic that plague this adventure. Definitely check out one of the better games from your friendly local game store, however! We bought ours at the ever excellent Atomic Empire in Durham, NC, check out their online store here!

4/10 (Subpar)

Unlock! Exotic Adventures – The Night of the Boogeymen (Review)

June 26, 2019June 26, 2019 ~ EscapeAdventurer ~ 1 Comment

Location: Your Home!

Players: We recommend 1-3

Price: $14.99

1, 2, Boogey’s coming for you

Theme:

Little William has been plagued with nightmares; visions of terrible boogeymen haunt his dreams every night, keeping him awake! It’s your job to help William get a good night’s sleep by exorcising these hideous monsters from his bedroom. But be quick, because the monsters are keen on devouring his dreams and replacing them with horrific nightmares! Beat the boogeymen and don’t wake William!

First Impressions:

The easiest of the newest set of Unlock! adventures tends to be the cutest, and is many times one of the stand out games every time a new set of three releases. Night of the Boogeymen was certainly a very interesting theme, and the box cover seemed appropriately equal parts cute and spooky, so I was definitely interested to see how the game play held up.

High Points:

The art style throughout the game is really fantastic, the designs for the boogeymen are mildly threatening while keeping up a spooky vibe without veering off into family unfriendliness. Which is good, as this set is definitely the most family focused entry since the return of Dr. NoSide. The puzzles and game set up do a great job of instilling a sense of derealization to the game, causing the familiar feeling of the bedroom to become surreal and somewhat eerie. The puzzles line up well with this theme, using a dreamlike logic to tie everything together. The boogeyman mechanic is interesting, presenting a series of mini-boss like stages to the game, and while an attached mechanic is somewhat ill advised, (more on that below,) the splitting up of the game into stages of boogeyman battles is a fun one. Rather than presenting multiple rooms, the game takes you through parts of the room that each boogeyman inhabits, and it’s fun to see how they affect each area. The game is mostly non-linear to a point, however, so it still can keep a larger group puzzling, though I wouldn’t approach with any more than four players, per usual for this type of game.

The boogiest of men!

Low Points:

Puzzles sometimes become entirely too dreamlike in places, requiring logical leaps that don’t quite make full sense, but work anyway. Several moments of old school adventure game logic carried a couple of the interactions, leading us to need to smush whatever we could together until we finally arrived at a correct conclusion. Though the puzzles were mostly good and present a serviceable game, they aren’t amazingly memorable. None really stood out to me as excellently creative or beyond the usual for Unlock! games. Overall, they were just fine. There are a couple of gotcha moments as well, which present reasonable answers just to pop you with a negative penalty just because. Generally, negative feedback shouldn’t come from doing something reasonable, or something that the game urges you to do, but Night of the Boogeymen absolutely does. Worse, one of the results is a card that outright tells you they’re wasting your time. None of this really drove the experience forward, and once we’d dealt with the issue, nothing was added to the adventure or storyline, it was just a speedbump for speedbump’s sake.

On that note, a new mechanic for this box is called “Constraints.” Negative effects that come into play when a boogeyman is revealed. These are mostly arbitrary conditions that I recommend completely ignoring, as they don’t really add anything to the game. There is a small story related reason for their inclusion, (thus their categorization as mostly arbitrary,) but they certainly didn’t add any fun to the game, so we quickly cast them aside in favor of just playing normally. Obviously, if you get to them and find them interesting, go ahead and use them, but this is one of those times when throwing out a rule made the game much more fun for us, which I generally encourage, having a background in Tabletop RPGs.

Highly recommend completely ignoring these cards unless you think they’ll be fun.

Verdict:

Night of the Boogeymen is a serviceable Unlock! adventure, and certainly one of the most family friendly, but looking back on it, the game is just OK. Good enough for an hour’s fun, but ultimately not very memorable, with some mechanics that serve to frustrate rather than entertain. I’d give it a shot if you’ve already played the other Unlock! boxes, but until then, there are much better adventures to be had. We bought ours at the ever excellent Atomic Empire in Durham, NC, check out their online store here!

6/10 (Alright)