Room Escape Artist

A slow burn.

Location:  at home

Date Played: August-September 2024

Team size: any; we recommend 1-2

Duration: dozens of hours of candle, less than an hour of puzzling

Price: $52

REA Reaction

The Final Girl: 1985 is a play-at-home puzzle game in the form of a scented candle. In addition to the usual paper materials, Mysterywick also conceals physical clues within the candles themselves—an inherently intriguing concept. But looking back on The Final Girl: 1985, it felt like a good-quality candle first and foremost, with puzzles as a secondary element.

The gameplay stood out from other boxed puzzle games for one big reason: The slowness of burning a candle contrasted sharply with the forward momentum of most escape games. The time between clues may be many hours or even days, depending on how dedicated you are to burning the candle. Waiting for a reply to an emailed hint request detracted further from any sense of urgency. The leisurely pace did make each discovery exciting, but all the downtime took away from the cohesiveness of the game. The drawn-out process also felt incongruous with the story of tracking down a missing camp counselor before she became the victim of a serial killer.

The Final Girl: 1985 is rated “3 out of 4 perplexity level,” and Mysterywick calls it the hardest of their puzzle candles. Indeed, our team of two experienced escape room enthusiasts got stalled almost immediately. But the rest of the game was easy by comparison, and total puzzling time was quite short. 

We were impressed by the visual design and enjoyed the candle itself, but ultimately the puzzles felt like the weakest part of 1985. I would recommend 1985 to people who are interested in the candle on its own, and who are happy to consider the gameplay a bonus. If you’re not a candle person and you’re just in it for the puzzles, I’d suggest looking for something else to spark that flame.

Who is this for?

• Patient puzzlers
• Slasher film fans
• Candle connoisseurs
• Best for experienced players

Why play?

• Novel format
• Solid product design
• Smells better than most escape rooms

Story

Just before the start of summer camp, exactly 10 years after we encountered a mysterious killer in 1975, the murderer struck again. A camp counselor was abducted, and we had to follow the killer’s twisted trail of clues to find the missing girl before it was too late.

Setup

The Final Girl: 1985 was a scented soy wax candle that came packaged with a few paper puzzle materials as well as tips for both burning the candle and playing the game. Mysterywick also provided bamboo tongs for retrieving further clues from the candle itself.

Hints were available by emailing Mysterywick, with a variable time delay before they answered (up to a few days, according to their FAQ).

Gameplay

Mysterywick’s The Final Girl: 1985 was a candle-based puzzle game with a variable but sometimes very high level of difficulty. 

Core gameplay revolved around observing, making connections, deciphering, and waiting for the candle to burn. Mysterywick calls their puzzle candles an “extended immersive experience” because gameplay is staggered by the slow burn of the candle in between short bursts of puzzling.

The Final Girl: 1985 is the second part in a trilogy of games (bookended by 1975 and 1995), but they can be played in any order. We didn’t feel like we’d missed out on anything by playing the second game first.

Analysis

➕ The Final Girl: 1985’s design and materials looked great. Opening and unpacking the box was exciting—it felt like everything could be part of a puzzle. The components were high quality and intriguing.

➕ This candle’s scent profile is labeled as dark forest, campfire, and bug spray, which may sound unorthodox, but we thought it smelled pleasant and provided an immersive backdrop for the experience.

➖ The difficulty curve was uneven, starting out with a surprisingly high complexity and continuing with much easier clues until the devious finale. We got stuck early on because a puzzle seemed so advanced we doubted what we were meant to do. Puzzle hunt veterans would probably clock what was going on sooner, but we needed to seek help outside the game.

➖ After the initial excitement of familiarizing ourselves with the beautiful game materials, in the end, the puzzle content felt a bit sparse. Most of our puzzling time was spent making sense of the first section, and then the rest of the clues we uncovered led to a very brief finale.

❓1985 unfolded at the relaxing pace of a candle. Mysterywick estimates that each candle takes 40-60 hours to burn. Burning the candle for a couple hours every day, we uncovered a clue maybe once a week. The gameplay is uniquely slow and devoid of momentum or dramatic tension.

❓/➖ Speaking of tension, we felt some dissonance between the gameplay and the serial killer theme. In the story we were in a race against time to save our friend, but as players we spent days waiting for the next clue (or hint).

➕ We enjoyed the novelty of a puzzle game embedded in a candle. Playing 1985 made me curious to try another game with this format.

Tips For Players

• Space Requirements: a small table
• Required Gear: candle burning accessories (lighter or matches, wick trimmer)

Because of the theming, Mysterywick does not recommend this product for children.

Don’t wait for permission to start burning the candle. The candle will last a lot longer than the puzzles. Just make sure to read all the provided tips first, for both safety and gameplay reasons.

Buy your copy of Mysterywick’s The Final Girl: 1985, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.