Room Escape Artist

“…help with this whole proliferation of evil situation.”

Location:  at home

Date Played:  February 2025

Team size: 1 or more; we recommend 2-4, but it’s really best as 3

Duration: 12+ hours

Price: about $65 on Kickstarter for the main game, plus additional rewards at higher tiers

REA Reaction

Pandora’s Legacy is a masterpiece that sits at the intersection of jigsaw puzzles, puzzle hunt, and Greek mythology.

I never would have guessed that the collaboration that I needed most in tabletop puzzle games would be TED-Ed (makers of wonderful educational video content) and PostCurious (makers of many of my favorite tabletop puzzle games). Together, they have produced one of the most ambitious and beautiful tabletop puzzling experiences.

It has beautiful art, precision components, incredible ahas, and a meaningful message, grounded in mythology and literature. It displays deep mastery of so many realms of experience design. It’s a magnificent and substantial product.

If you’re into jigsaw puzzles, then you’ll find a beautifully illustrated image to assemble, that grows over the course of the experience.

And if you’re into other types of puzzles, there are a variety of challenges for you to deduce your way through. All of this is backed by a robust and growing hint system that will help to meet you where you are. PostCurious has long set the standard for tabletop puzzle hinting (their founder even gave a talk at our convention RECON about hinting).

My one word of caution is that jigsaw solving and puzzle solving are different skillsets, and if you only like one of those, the other half might feel like a lot. The good news is that this can just be a great jigsaw puzzle if you want it to be (although the other puzzles are wonderful). And if you love puzzling, but not jigsaw puzzling, it solves well as a collaborative experience. Invite over a friend who loves to assemble jigsaws and share in the fun.

Overall, I loved Pandora’s Legacy. It was so much more interesting and ambitious than I ever expected… and I still keep thinking about the ending.

Pandora’s Legacy is available now on Kickstarter. We have a rule in that we only cover Kickstarters where we can play a complete prototype, so we can confirm that the game is real and produceable. Additionally, this may be TED-Ed’s first Kickstarter, but their collaborator PostCurious has built a thriving and respected business in the puzzle world by delivering beautiful, fun, and high quality games on-time (or within a reasonable amount of time when world events conspired against them).

If this sounds like your kind of good time, I wholeheartedly recommend Pandora’s Legacy, and look forward to seeing everyone’s reaction when they get their hands on a copy.

Who is this for?

• Story seekers
• Puzzle lovers
• Jigsaw puzzlers
• Fans of Greek myth
• Players with at least some experience

Why play?

• Intricate artwork
• Unique ahas derived from the medium
• Depth of puzzles and story

Story

Set within Greek myth, Pandora opened a magic box that was left in her husband’s care releasing chaos, curses, and evil into the world of man.

Setup

Within the box of Pandora’s Legacy was a beautifully illustrated jigsaw puzzle. After assembling it (and getting to know the picture along the way), we began exploring a collection of envelopes and boxes each labeled with a different Greek letter.

Some of these boxes contained additional jigsaw puzzle sections to expand the image, while others contained other types of puzzles that used the picture as clues.

Solving the additional puzzles took a combination of wits and the jigsaw puzzle to find a solution.

Throughout the game, we input our solutions into a website that helped us figure out which boxes to open next, as well as provided granular hints and support.

Gameplay

Pandora’s Legacy was an unusual tabletop game that combined a challenging jigsaw puzzle with escape room-style gameplay.

It had a high level of difficulty, in part because it relied on varied puzzle solving skill sets. Additionally the length and depth of some puzzles pushed the puzzle solving perhaps more into “puzzle hunt” territory, rather than “tabletop escape room” territory.

Core gameplay revolved around solving a jigsaw puzzle, observing details, making connections, and thinking outside the box. The puzzles layered atop the jigsaw included logic, ciphers, and deductive reasoning, among other skills.

The physical components of Pandora’s Legacy were accompanied by an app. To solve the puzzles, we input the numbers on the backs of relevant pieces. The app also provided a helpful map, puzzle cluing, answer checking, and the hint system.

Analysis

➕ The jigsaw puzzle was a lot of fun to solve. We were surprised by its size (even though we’d read the measurements!). Its unique shape added intrigue without adding too much difficulty. The design was pretty, with intricate details to take in while solving. The details, colors, and textures made it approachable, even for less experienced jigsaw puzzlers. And, as a bonus, there wasn’t too much puzzle dust!

➕ The materials were high quality. The printed materials, boxes, and envelopes looked nice, and felt sturdy. Any object we unlocked was well constructed.

❓Pandora’s Legacy dove deep into Greek myth. Players who knew the subject matter well got more from the experience than those who did not. If you know and love Greek myth, Pandora’s Legacy will delight you. That said, for broader accessibility, it would be helpful to have additional background on the characters and their stories.

➕ The balance between solving a jigsaw and solving the other puzzles worked well. We liked the flow of revealing more jigsaw and unlocking more puzzles.

➕The onboarding puzzle was elegant. It was thematic, clued us as to how to work with the jigsaw, and ended up having more depth than was immediately apparent.

➕ The caduceus was brilliant. It was more interesting than it initially appeared. If anything, we wanted even more from it… but that’s just greed on our part.

➕ We have solved “escape room” puzzles bolted onto jigsaws before with Ravensburger’s Escape Puzzles and some Exit: The Game installments and Lost in a Jigsaw: The Diagonal Maze Puzzle, and The Magic Puzzle Company. That is to say, we’ve seen this mechanic in practice in many styles. But sometimes the apple falls farther from the tree; we were totally bought in with an early aha that was nothing like any of these others. Through the experience, Pandora’s Legacy used the jigsaw puzzle in thematic, interesting, and unusual ways.

➕ The companion app (only available for desktop when we played) was well-designed. We appreciated how the map focused our attention. This was a nice affordance.

➖ The additional jigsaw puzzle extensions could have benefitted from an extra point of connection to the main jigsaw puzzle.

➕ Our favorite puzzles played to our strengths, of course. Lisa loved combining words, and transforming layers of meaning. David loved precision measurements and fine details.

➕/➖We appreciated that Pandora’s Legacy took risks with multimedia, while considering accessibility. In one instance, however, we found the app wasn’t intuitively sound enough. In another, we weren’t well enough shielded from accidentally undoing all of our work when we were, in fact, on the right path.

➕/❓ The puzzles were challenging, often with more nuance or depth than we were originally anticipating. We were continually impressed by this, and at times frustrated. Your mileage may vary.

➖ At times, after the ahas, a lengthy process became a maze. We would have appreciated additional visual confirmation in the hints, which would have allowed us intermediary confirmation for multistep processes. Throughout the game there were opportunities to add more visual hints.

➕ The culmination of Pandora’s Legacy was poignant. The message of the game really hit us hard in early 2025

Tips For Players

• Space Requirements: a large table – the puzzle is 40in x 20in (100cm x 50cm)
• Required Gear: pencil and paper, and an internet connected phone or computer

Repod

To hear more from Rita Orlov, check out our conversation with her on REPOD

Buy your copy of TED-Ed + PostCurious’s Pandora’s Legacy, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: TED-Ed provided a sample for review.