Room Escape Artist

The Gilded Carcanet is a print-and-play game created by Andreas Boye and published by Escape Room Geeks.

Format

Style of Play:

• Print-and-play
• Tabletop escape game

Who is it For?

• Newbies
• Families

Required Equipment: printer, paper, and scissors

Recommended Team Size: 1-2

Play Time: 45-75 minutes, depending on your group size and experience level

Price: $29

Booking: purchase and play at your leisure

Description

This is a print-and-play game. Players receive a zip file via email containing two pdf files; one is the game and the other is a walkthrough. The player prints out the game pdf; you can print the 22 pages in either black & white or color, one side only.

The story was told through a series of comic strips where our trusty sidekick Oscar pointed out interesting objects and asked us questions. Then we solved puzzles to answer Oscar’s questions. There were 10 chapters, and thus 10 puzzles to solve.

The game was fully offline and included a unique way of checking answers to puzzles between chapters.

Joel Smileypeacefun Reaction

As a professor, you go on an adventure to find “The Gilded Carcanet,” a treasure your old school friend has been trying to locate for years. Will you be successful?

At its best, there are a lot of things done right with this game. The instructions made for an easy onramp, the comic artwork looked cool, and the answer check was simple yet effective. Solving the puzzles felt satisfying, as there were well-themed and sometimes layered challenges. Additionally, the story always told you how long an item was still useful and in play.

At its worst, although the idea of one puzzle was maybe a tiny bit far-fetched, overall the puzzles felt on the easier side (not a 4.5 out of 5 difficulty) and probably won’t take experienced players as long as suggested. Also, the story is nicely told but the ending was unsurprising.

I had a great time solo-playing through this. As usual, I tried to print two pages on one piece to save some paper (not double-sided though), and that worked for me. You can play the game in multiple languages; I played in German.

Christina Rohlf’s Reaction

The Gilded Carcanet was an enjoyable Sunday afternoon activity. I played this game with one other enthusiast. Our completion time was well under the 90-120 minute gameplay advertised on the website. Additionally, I found the puzzles to be extremely easy, but logical, well designed, and fun. I would not recommend this game for puzzle enthusiasts. However, The Gilded Carcanet could be a fun activity for families with children, beginner level puzzlers, or for a classroom.

Cindi S’ Reaction

The Gilded Carcanet was a print-and-play game that led us on an adventure to explore ancient ruins to find a lost treasure. There was a range of puzzle styles, from logic to ciphers, and even a few tactile paper puzzles that added a nice variety and kept the game moving along. Puzzles were not especially difficult. There were a couple that were not immediately obvious in how to solve, but we completed the rest pretty quickly. The process of checking answers was clever and avoided accidental spoilers. I really liked the colorful comic-book-style artwork; though you can solve the puzzles with black & white copy, seeing the images in color was much more inviting. That said, the cost of the game plus 22 pages of single-sided printing made this a rather pricy experience for a print-and-play.

Disclosure: The author provided the Hivemind reviewers with a complimentary play.