At Home Games I’ve Loved Before Part II – Recommendations for Sheltering in Place

April 9, 2020April 9, 2020 ~ EscapeAdventurer ~ Leave a comment

Hi All!

I’m continuing this short series of at home recommendations, this week looking into some of my favorite retail at home escape games. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wear on, we’re definitely missing getting out for escape room marathons, (and getting out in general,) but these are some great substitutes until we can get back in the swing of things!

At Home Escape Games:

There are some really great at home games available from your friendly local games store that simulate the experience of an escape room pretty well. Here are a few of our favorites!

Thames and Kosmos:

Adventure Games: Monochrome Inc. – We haven’t gotten our full review of the new Adventure Games line from Thames and Kosmos, the masterminds behind the wonderfully creative Exit: the Game series, but if you’re looking for a heavily story based game based on the point and click adventure games that saw their golden age in the 90s, this is the game for you! Full of great surprises and fun inventory based puzzling, this one is a blast! The run time is also fairly long, taking us a good four hours or so to finish completely.

Exit: The Game: The Sinister Mansion – I love spooky, and I love Exit: The Game. These escape games in a box are always deviously clever, with so many creative and varied puzzles, and The Sinister Mansion is definitely one of my favorites, as it is part of a longer, ongoing meta story. Luckily, you can start anywhere with these, and the out of the box interactions are sure the keep players on their toes!

Exit: The Game: Dead Man on the Orient Express – This is currently Exit’s game to beat. A perfect mix of storytelling, mystery solving, and well integrated puzzles, this game evolves the standard formula of Exit and takes it to new heights! I’d caution against playing this one first, however, as it’s a doozy, even for established puzzlers, but if you like Exit’s other offerings, you’ll adore this one.

You can read all of our Exit: The Game reviews here!

Unlock!:

Unlock! The Adventures of Oz – Another game we never quite got around to reviewing due to a massive backlog in 2018, The Adventures of Oz is an amazingly fun, yet enormously challenging Unlock escape! One of the most compelling games Space Cowboys has put out to date, it innovated the basic formula in non-frustrating ways, and brings the world of Oz to life in a way that will give any puzzle enthusiast a run for their money!

Unlock! The Tonipal’s Treasure – My favorite of the bunch, because pirates, but also because great puzzles! The Tonipal’s Treasure is a challenging Unlock! game that delivers some awesome twists and beautifully constructed puzzle threads. The final meta puzzle was a delight, and there was even a secret bonus game tied to this adventure! Though the ultimate prize has long since been claimed, it is still playable online.

Unlock! A Noside Story – Doctor Noside is a fantastic cartoon villain, and his exploits over the course of Squeak and Sausage and A Noside Story are fun to foil. Easily some of the best at home escape romps, the cartoon logic is fun to wrap your head around, and the challenge is set to a manageable level, ensuring this one is fun for the whole family!

Our archive of Unlock! reviews are here!

Miscellaneous:

Escape Room in a Box: The Werewolf Experiment – The Werewolf Experiment is a great intro to at home escape games for newbies, and though it was really cute and fun to puzzle through for us, escape enthusiasts may find it a bit too easy for their liking. However, we had a great time, and absolutely think families and new players will love it!

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)

Unlock! Mystery Adventures: The Tonipal’s Treasure (Review)

March 13, 2019March 13, 2019 ~ EscapeAdventurer ~ 3 Comments

Location: Your Home!

Players: We recommend 1-3

Price: $14.99

Hoist the Black Flag!

Theme:

You’ve been on the trail of Captain Smith’s fabled buried treasure, and are on your way to Tonipal Island to claim it when the Governor throws you in prison for some contrived reason! Not coincidentally, the treasure hunter Johnson has started to make his way to the treasure himself, and will snatch it out from under you soon if you don’t hurry! You’ll need to escape from prison, find a treasure map, and enlist the help of a Voodoo practitioner along the way if you hope to succeed!

First Impressions:

The Tonipal’s Treasure is right up my alley, presenting a pirate treasure hunt full of swashbuckling adventure and devious puzzles! I noticed that the cards themselves were a bit different from their usual design, and this hinted at an excellent surprise that was in store for later. The full design of the game is one of the best in the series, and I couldn’t wait to see if the content matched the excellent packaging!

Talking parrots, broken compasses, and a treasure to seek!

High Points:

The Tonipal’s Treasure is jam packed full of puzzles, and working through it is an absolute blast! There are loads of creative interactions to play around with, and at no point do any of the puzzles presented feel boring. This adventure is also full of surprises, as many of the cards will be used in creative and innovative ways, unlocking various ah ha moments every step of the way. The game flow is impeccable for the most part, with only one point creating a roadblock due to insufficient cluing. This treasure hunt is also the most challenging, but fair, Unlock! game I’ve experienced to date. The game presents several locations all across the fictionalized Caribbean, and there are always several puzzles to solve at any given moment. Regarding the puzzles, they’re highly logical, and do not require any strange leaps to be made, and on the whole, each one provides just enough hints to lead players to fantastic moments of revelation.

The atmosphere that is set up by the Unlock! app is also fantastic, boasting a Pirates of the Caribbean-esque score, and loads of audio hints that are revealed by many of the cards. Feedback from the app is great, and the ability to take hints, track time, and work on certain “machine” puzzles in a more interactive way all combine to bolster the experience and make it more immersive than a basic at home escape room. The story develops throughout the game, and though it isn’t particularly deep, it accompanies the game well, and presents a climactic and satisfying finale.

It wouldn’t be an excellent Unlock! game without a friendly puppy to help you out!

Low Points:

One particular puzzle is very poorly clued, and involves a fair bit of math that doesn’t make much sense on the surface. Honestly, it feels as though there’s something missing throughout the solve, and the reasoning behind one number never made much sense at all until we realized that a certain letter was actually a number. If you’re unfamiliar with the metric system, this one will become even more difficult.

Verdict:

The Tonipal’s Treasure is a fantastic addition to the Unlock! line of at home escape games. Innovating on the basic formula and including loads of surprising new ways to interact with the cards, I highly recommend checking it out. A more difficult adventure, veteran players will definitely enjoy the challenge, but I don’t think newer players would be lost thanks to the excellent game flow and helper app. We bought ours at the ever excellent Atomic Empire in Durham, NC, check out their online store here!

9/10 (Excellent)