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Ravensburger – Vampire’s Castle Escape Puzzle [Review]

 

David Spira
2–3 minutes

That last bite sucks…

Location:  at home

Team size: We recommend 1-4

Duration: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Price: $25

Publisher: Ravensburger

REA Reaction

We really wanted to love this puzzle. From a jigsaw puzzle standpoint, this was comfortably our favorite of the 4 Ravensburger Escape Puzzles.

Unfortunately, once we’d assembled the jigsaw puzzle, the “escape room” puzzles were a mess. There were multiple broken or ambiguous puzzles. While it all came together well enough in the end, the mistakes were too numerous and inexcusable for us to recommend this product.

A portion of the puzzle including a few suites of armor.

Pretty much all of the issues could be fixed in a future printing, if Ravensburger gets around to it. I hope that they do.

In the mean time, I’d recommend passing on this one unless you’re keen on doing the jigsaw or you’ve played Space Observatory, Witch’s Kitchen, and Submarine and want to complete the set.

Series Overview

This review only covers details specific to this individual Ravensburger Escape Puzzle.

For a detailed explanation of the concept, mechanics, and a general analysis of the entire product line, check out our Ravensburger Escape Puzzle Overview.

Closeup of Dracula emerging from his coffin.

Story

While vacationing in Romania, we’d decided to take a hike. Along the way we’d found an old castle; we couldn’t turn down the adventure. As we entered the castle, the door had locked behind us. We slowly realized that we weren’t alone. What could we do to survive?

A portion of the puzzle including vampire bats.

Analysis

➕ From a purely jigsaw puzzle standpoint, Vampire’s Castle was our favorite of Ravensburger’s Escape Puzzles. The image was vibrant, with a lot of color and texture variation. The design kept our momentum going from start to finish.

➕ The puzzle was filled with all sorts of cute oddities and amusing details.

The Vampires Castle Escape puzzle box.

➖ Too many of the puzzles within the puzzle were problematic. A third of the puzzles worked well. A third of the puzzles were too ambiguous for my liking… and a third of them were a total mess.

➖ There was a counting puzzle that was far too fuzzy.

➖ The puzzles that didn’t work properly were baffling, I’m really confused as to how they went to print.

➕ The final puzzle was satisfying.

Buy It Now

Buy your copy of Ravensburger’s Vampire’s Castle Escape Puzzles, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Ravensburger provided a sample for review.

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18 responses to “Ravensburger – Vampire’s Castle Escape Puzzle [Review]”

  1. MissMystra Avatar
    MissMystra

    Okay, glad I’m not the only one who thought this puzzle was a disaster. I’ve been playing through the whole series and really loving them, but the clues for this one were incredibly frustrating. I even think there might have been a typo on ours because even reverse engineering one of the puzzles couldn’t make the math add up.

    Such a shame, because it was so fun to put together.

    Reply
  2. Joel Avatar
    Joel

    I stopped playing them after the first three ones. A lot of puzzling but very few actual escape-room-esque riddles in the end.

    Reply
  3. Heather Avatar
    Heather

    Agreed!!! This is our 3rd escape puzzle and it was a doozy! The puzzles were so frustrating! We too found a typo/math discrepancy. I JUST bought our 4th one (Submarine), and I’m hoping it turns out to be a better experience. We did enjoy the Witch’s Kitchen & Space Observatory a lot though. 🙂

    Reply
  4. Charles R Woods Avatar
    Charles R Woods

    I could never get the rug puzzle to work out properly. Does anyone have any pointers? Thank you

    Reply
    1. Martin O Avatar
      Martin O

      I am also interested to get a hint.. I can’t see anything there.

      Reply
      1. David Spira Avatar
        David Spira

        Hi Martin – the official hints are available on the Escape Puzzle website: https://escape-puzzle-support.com/en/vampirschloss/

        That said is not one of the broken puzzles in this experience, and it is a function of shifting your visual perspective. I hope that helps you.

    2. Jeffrey C. Hemmerdinger Avatar
      Jeffrey C. Hemmerdinger

      Search for images of this puzzle there is one that shows the numbers in red.
      even after seeing them I can barely see them in the rug. They are stretched so tall that you have to stand back to see them.

      Reply
      1. David Spira Avatar
        David Spira

        The trick is to look at it on a steep angle, it’s all about the angle of viewing.

  5. Pat LaChance Avatar
    Pat LaChance

    Absolutely loved the Witch’s Kitchen as well as my friends at work. We pretty much solved with it the clues given. Even my kids helped out. The Vampire puzzle is an absolute mess. Clues are ambiguous or non existent. One clue was cut up between pieces so you would never find it. I’ve yet to figure out the rug on the floor or clues in the picture of the soldier. Don’t waste your money. I’m not sure if I would buy another. On the brighter side, it was fun to put together.

    Reply
    1. David Spira Avatar
      David Spira

      Fully agree with you Pat. I will say that the Vampire Castle is the low point for the Escape Puzzle series.

      If you liked Witch’s Kitchen, then there are others that I think that you’ll enjoy… If I had done Vampire’s Castle first, I’m not sure that I would have tried another.

      Reply
  6. Dianne Baker Avatar
    Dianne Baker

    Loved the picture part of the puzzle. The escape puzzles were ridiculously convoluted and there were math errors all over the place! Even using the cheats, the final puzzle is not clear. Our solution matched the ‘answer card’ and we still don’t know what it means!!! Big disappointment!

    Reply
  7. Talldog Avatar
    Talldog

    I did the Space Observatory puzzle first and spent some time generally solving the puzzle clues. I’m glad I didn’t put any appreciable amount of time into trying to solve the Vampire’s Castle puzzle clues — because I still can’t follow the logic(?) even after reading through all of the hints and the answers! If I buy another one of these Escape Puzzles, it will only be for the purpose of building the puzzle itself. I do these things to chill out, not to raise my blood pressure and make my head hurt….

    Reply
    1. David Spira Avatar
      David Spira

      Honestly, Vampire’s Castle is the only one that suffers from problems like this. One or two puzzles in the Submarine are funky… the rest solve cleanly.

      Reply
  8. Diane Sawyer Avatar
    Diane Sawyer

    Agree that the hints and answer make no sense on this one, but I just enjoy doing the puzzles. Bravo to Ravensburger for having great puzzles.

    Reply
    1. David Spira Avatar
      David Spira

      Yeah, it really is a lovely jigsaw puzzle.

      Reply
  9. Erik Velthuis Avatar
    Erik Velthuis

    Actually I really loved the rug puzzle in Vampire’s Castle. The pattern of long dark blocks in the grid at three levels gave me the idea the were actually the horizontal parts of digital numbers.

    Reply
  10. Karen Erickson Avatar
    Karen Erickson

    We just finished this puzzle. We have done all of the others to “fun” success. This vampire puzzle was entertaining to complete but the 8 puzzles to solve were ill thought out. Even One of the final numbers was not printed on any of the pieces. We were able to escape using logic and pulling the pieces that matched what we knew the solution should be. We killed the vampire. But the math didn’t work to lead us to the pieces to use for the solution. If this were our first Rathensberger puzzle, we would have not returned to this brand. This puzzle needs serious editing, proofing, and redesign. Great as a puzzle, horrible as a mystery challenge.

    Reply
    1. David Spira Avatar
      David Spira

      Agree

      Reply

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