Room Escape Artist

Rich uncle’s last puzzle & testament

Location:  at home

Date Played: March 2020

Team size: We recommend 1-4

Duration: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Price: about $25

Publisher: Ravensburger

REA Reaction

Forbidden Basement Escape Puzzle may be the most escape room-y of Ravensburger’s Escape Puzzle series.

For this jigsaw puzzle-based experience, Ravensburger took a classic escape room setup, and put their own visual twist on the concept.

This was an approachable, fun, and fast-solving jigsaw puzzle. There were lots of colors and overt textures that we could sink our teeth into.

The escape puzzles within the jigsaw puzzle were creative, but mostly straightforward.

We wished that the visual underpinning the meta-puzzle solve was a little sharper. It was a cool idea, but it looked kind of blurry.

All in all, if you’re a fan of jigsaw puzzles and want a little more of an escape room twist, we recommend Forbidden Basement Escape Puzzle. It worked well, solved cleanly, and while it offered up some challenge, it never once stymied us. We enjoyed the momentum.

SERIES OVERVIEW

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

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

Story

A distant uncle passed away and left us access to his estate. If we could find his fortune it would be ours to keep.

Analysis

➕ The art was quirky and playful. There were a lot of strange things to look at while building this puzzle. The image had depth and texture, which added momentum to the jigsaw solving.

➖ While the image worked well for puzzling, it wasn’t captivating as an image to piece together.

➕/➖ Once we’d completed the jigsaw, it was straightforward to locate and work through the escape puzzles. They solved cleanly… with one exception:

➕ The escape puzzles took inspiration from escape room gameplay. While grounded in familiar concepts, they were varied, interesting solves.

➖ The meta-puzzle solve was conceptually cool, but the visual was far too blurry. We knew what we were looking at, but it didn’t look right. It was a less satisfying culmination of the Ravensburger Escape Puzzle experience.

❓With Ravensburger Escape Puzzles, it’s generally recommended to solve the edge later. You can read more about the oddities of the edges in our Escape Puzzle Overview. In Forbidden Basement Escape Puzzle, you can choose to solve the edge first, like you would most puzzles, and you won’t be hopelessly lost.

Buy It Now

Purchase your copy of Ravensburger’s Forbidden Basement Escape Puzzle, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Ravensburger provided a sample for review.

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon or Etsy after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.