Exit: The Game Kids – Jungle of Riddles [Kids’ Product Review]

Six ways to hide a sloth…

Location:  at home

Date Played: May 2023

Team size: 1-4; we recommend 1-2 kids plus 1 adult (at first)

Duration: 20 minutes per round (replayable)

Age range: 5-7; we recommend 5-7

Price: about $16

REA Reaction

Jungle of Riddles is a replayable gauntlet of straightforward puzzling tasks that may delight 5-7-year-olds before they’re old enough to participate in the standard installments of Exit: The Game. I played this with puzzle-savvy children aged 4, 6, 7, and 10. 6 was definitely the sweet spot, 4 was a little young, and 10 was outright bored.

The game design offered very simple exposure to skills like observation, deduction, and spatial awareness. To me, these presentations seemed almost trivial, but to the target age range, they provided a reasonable amount of challenge. In fact, I initially thought this game was bereft of any sense of discovery or ahas…only to be humbled by watching a 6 year old beam with pride as they located hidden animals, pattern-matched interesting shapes, and interpreted simple maps. What struck me as simply following instructions made the kids feel like detectives, and indeed practice with those skills will form a foundation for more complex puzzling in the future. In a way, this felt like a gamified children’s activity book, a format that has withstood the test of time for a reason. Kudos to the game designers for serving their audience well.

The biggest problem for the 5-7 age range was the construction of the game materials. Two riddle types required overlaying slick game pieces on top of slick cards. The kids kept accidentally displacing the game pieces, which caused significant problems interpreting the results. In fact, even the classic decoder wheel of Exit: The Game fame was unwieldy for the kids. They would align the code correctly but jostle it out of place while flipping the wheel over to validate the answer. This was the primary hurdle to completely independent play.

If a child can follow along with any of the standard installments of Exit: The Game, Jungle of Riddles will be too lightweight for them. However, as an introduction to pre-puzzling skills that can be played repeatedly and possibly independently, it serves a valuable role on the game shelf.

Who is this for?

• Children between the ages of 5 and 7 that aren’t quite ready for the full-blown Exit: The Game experience

Why play?

• To search for lots of cute cartoon animals
• To “practice the detective skills that we all need to learn,” in the words of one 6-year-old fan

Story

We found ourselves wandering through the Jungle of Riddles, a very green place populated by 18 animals and several treasure chests. For each riddle we answered, these animals offered us a key to a treasure chest.

Setup

The game consisted of 6 decks of riddle cards. Each deck was labelled with a different symbol that indicated a specific type of riddle. To play through the game once, we drew a card from each deck. Each riddle type resolved to a set of 3 animals, which we aligned on a decoder wheel along with the symbol for the riddle type. We flipped the decoder over to reveal whether we received a “key” for our efforts or needed to try again. If we received a key, we placed a key token on one of nine treasure chests. At the end of the game, we got to reveal the treasures in the chests we unlocked.

Here are the six types of riddles:

• Moonshadow – Identify which 3 animals combined to form a particular shadow shape.
• Binoculars – Determine which 3 animals are NOT in the picture.
• Magnifying Glass – Place a cut-out magnifying glass precisely on a card such that only 3 animals are in view.
• Map – Follow a prescribed route along a map to encounter 3 animals.
• Leaves – Place 5 leaf-shaped cut-outs on a card in a specific configuration to see which 3 animals remain visible.
• Hat – Search the game box for the 3 animals that are wearing a specified hat.

Unlike in standard installments of Exit: The Game, none of the components got destroyed. The entire game was designed to be replayed many times by using a different combination of riddle cards with each playthrough.

Gameplay

Exit: The Game Kids’s Jungle of Riddles was a children’s play-at-home escape game with a low-to-moderate level of difficulty for the audience.

The puzzles involved matching, simple deduction, spatial awareness, and searching. Players do not need to know how to read.

Analysis

➕ The 6 riddle types in this game were reasonable for the target age range.

➕ Different riddle types appealed to different kids, so the variety seemed to satisfy multiple skills and interests.

➖ The decoder wheel and some of the riddle materials were fidgety. The pieces slid around a fair amount, which could be upsetting for an age range that is still developing fine motor skills.

➕/➖ If kids can manage the fidgety bits, they can play this independently after one or two practice rounds. Otherwise, an older facilitator would be necessary, but probably won’t enjoy the game much themselves.

➕ All the kids enjoyed the treasure reveal at the end, some even more than the game itself.

➕ The game is designed to be replayed multiple times by the same players, just with a different set of riddle cards each time. If a child enjoys the riddle types, there is plenty of value in this box.

Tips For Players

• Space Requirements: A small table or floor space.
• Required Gear: None!

Buy your copy of Exit: The Game Kids’s Jungle of Riddles, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Exit: The Game provided a media copy for review.

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