Room Escape Artist

Return to the scene of the crime

Location:  at home

Date Played: March 2024

Team size: 1+; we recommend 2

Duration: about 2 hours

Price: about $9.99

REA Reaction

The Crime Scene series of games was one of the items that caught our eyes when we attended Toy Fair 2023. The boxes promised a series of games based around grisly murders spread throughout time and space. On that point, they delivered.

For this review, we played two of the boxed Crime Scene games: Brooklyn 2002 and London 1892. The games played similarly to each other with only slight variation in gameplay. We played Brooklyn first, which turned out to be the better choice as London increased the complexity by utilizing clues in additional places – similar to the way the Exit: The Game series uses the whole box as a designable surface.

Our team found these games to be a mixed bag. Some areas were overexplained, others under-explained. This led to a slow start and some stop-and-go play as the instructions were overly complicated for what turned out to be a relatively simple gameplay loop. But the gameplay loop itself was enjoyable. These games were highly narrative-based, and our next steps were determined by the clues we gleaned from the story and the series’ namesake crime scene photograph.

By following the trail of clues through the story and crime scene, we built a few classic string-and-pushpin murderboards. The card art used this motif as a way of verifying that we had chosen the correct cards to explore. We did have some issues where we lost the thread of which cards had to verify against each other, but were able to get back on track each time. The issue was that each puzzle creates a standalone board that is discarded after solving, and with multiple cards in play at a time, we sometimes lost where a puzzle ended and the next one began.

The core gameplay idea here is interesting, but the occasional rules confusion created breaks in our flow and affected our overall enjoyment of the two boxes that we played. Being extremely organized helped, and I’m hopeful that further boxes will iterate on the flow of the game. Bringing in further game elements in the way that London built on the foundation of Brooklyn will also help in making these feel like more polished games to look forward to.

Who is this for?

• Story seekers
• Fans of each box’s particular genre
• Best for players with at least some experience

Why play?

• An interesting mechanical take on investigating a crime scene

Story

In both boxes we played, we were an investigator called upon to look into a particularly memorable and well-described murder scene.

Setup

Each Crime Scene title was a standalone boxed game. They did not influence one another, and any number of them could be played in any order.

The box contained a small folder with two different types of instructions and a story book. The story book provided the narrative for the game, and was also used as the key to the book cipher that confirmed solutions to the game’s puzzles. There were four types of cards that drove gameplay interactions: evidence to collect, puzzle cards, hint cards, and reputation cards that determined the ease with which you solve the final puzzle.

The most unique element of the Crime Scene games was the crime scene photograph. This was an image printed on thick cardboard of the murder scene and all the evidence it contained, overlaid with a 5×6 numbered grid. Throughout the game, certain pieces of evidence were needed; these were found in the photograph and led to evidence cards, allowing the team to solve puzzles and advance the game.

Gameplay

Tactic’s Crime Scene boxed games were card-based play-at-home escape game with a moderate level of difficulty.

Players begin by reading the story and collecting evidence cards by finding details in the crime scene image. The evidence on the cards leads to puzzle cards and their solutions. Correctly solving the puzzles opens up more story details and evidence. Incorrect answers lead to a loss of reputation cards, which makes solving the game’s final puzzle trickier. This cycle continues until the entire story has been revealed and the final puzzle is revealed.

Analysis

➕/➖ Answer confirmation was done via a series of colored strings on each puzzle card. It was a clever way to give an impression of the construction of a murder board, but sometimes felt clunky and hard to manage when multiple cards were involved.

➖ There were two separate instruction and setup sheets included. One was geared more towards the overall goal and the contents and the other went into detail about how to set up and play the game. The partially overlapping info slowed down the setup process as we tried to parse both sheets at the same time.

➕ Each individual puzzle formed its own discrete murder board, making it obvious when all the relevant information had been gathered and solving could begin.

➖ One puzzle answer was unclear even after looking at the hints, and one findable item in the crime scene photo had two possibilities. Further clarification on both points would have been helpful to alleviate confusion.

➕ Both games had interesting stories and did a good job of giving the investigators a personality and motivation for delving into the crime.

➖ Some evidence cards provided more story exposition and could be used as keys to the book cipher puzzle answer confirmation process. This was not explicitly expressed in the rulebook and led to our team thinking a few puzzles in the London game were misprinted.

➕ The games were non-destructive, so they could be passed on to new players.

Tips For Players

• Space Requirements: A medium-sized tabletop.
• Required Gear: Pencil and paper for noting answers and taking notes. A magnifying light may be helpful to see smaller details.

Buy your copy of Tactic’s Crime Scene games, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Tactic provided a complimentary game.