Card magic
Location: at home
Date Played: February 12, 2020
Team size: 1-6; we recommend 2-3
Duration: 60 minutes
Price: about ~$15
REA Reaction
Deckscape games are consistently fun and playfully designed.
In recent installments, the games’ creators have put interesting and engaging spins on the gameplay. That was true of the stage magic-themed Behind the Curtain.
Since their first installment, however, Deckscape has always included a couple of gotcha “puzzles” that feel more like a game of “guess what I’m thinking” than a fair, solvable puzzle. I keep getting the impression that Deckscape’s designer feels that a game needs something that lots of people get wrong. While Behind the Curtain would have been more satisfying if every puzzle felt fair, thankfully we pushed through our early moments of frustration to reveal a truly satisfying play-at-home escape game.
From our perspective, Behind the Curtain was one of the strongest games in Deckscape’s respectable stable.
Who is this for?
- Puzzle lovers
- Any experience level
Why play?
- Solid puzzle play
- Clever use of simple concepts from magic
- This is one of Deckscape’s stronger products
Story
We had received an anonymous envelope with free tickets to a magic show performed by the legendary Lance Oldman in New York City… so we went to the show…
Setup
Behind the Curtain followed the same structure as all previous Deckscape games. We explained this in detail in our first Deckscape review of their original games Test Time & The Fate of London.
The only key difference in Behind the Curtain was the inclusion of a mysterious envelope.
Gameplay
Deckscape’s Behind the Curtain was a standard play-at-home escape game with a moderate level of difficulty.
Core gameplay revolved around observing and making connections.
Analysis
➕ Deckscape created magically thematic puzzles for Behind the Curtain. They would obscure, change, and misdirect. We appreciated how the gameplay style made sense with the story.
➕ In Behind the Curtain, Deckscape included props that allowed them to do more than they could otherwise have accomplished with only the deck of cards. They employed these in thematically relevant ways to add intrigue and deliver satisfying solves. They stretched these few additional props remarkably far.
➖ We encountered a few puzzles that felt like “gotcha” moments. One early puzzle was so egregiously obnoxious that we thought about quitting. Deckscape always throws in a couple of garbage puzzles and we hate that they do it. (Update: The most egregious gotcha moment for us was born from a misunderstanding of the rules… which is kind of a different problem, but one we’ll own a bit of)
➖ It wasn’t always clear – from the wording or the illustrations – when you needed an object or what you needed to understand about an object in order to solve a puzzle. This led to a couple of choke points where it was difficult to use the hint system to even figure out where to focus our attention.
➖ Although you should be able to solve through multiple stacks of cards at once for the bulk of the game, we broke sequence at one point due to some confusion born from the game’s art.
➕ We enjoyed an artistic late-game solve and the finale.
Tips For Players
- Space Requirements: a small table
- Required Gear: just the game
Buy your copy of Deckscape’s Behind the Curtain, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.
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